Sunday 26 February 2017

Sunday 26 February 2017

Warm toes – the kind of warmth that takes over your extremities with a strange tingling heat whenever cold and activity meet and are then introduced to a new, stronger heat. “Hello, how do you do? Rest now in my warmth…”

It’s the same heat and tingle awakening the fingers gripping the pen…

And this same heat, too, I am sure is painting my cheeks and nose an embarrassing but becoming (if I dare hope to say so) rouge… Me fumbling over my order might have added—deepened—that rouge…

A sip of my skim latte sends an altogether different, more pleasant, and definitely more welcome warmth down into my body…

The coffee travels and sinks down, outlining the esophagus and stomach that I could already feel – but in a most unpleasant way… like almost hard – a rock instead of a stomach, tethered to my throat by a rusty pipeline, sending belching signals of distress every so often…

I’d hoped the walk would help. It had a mile to do the trick… kai tipota. Nada.

Entaksei.

Here I am…

At a table in Starbucks—one of the high ones where we sat…

My back is to the wall, although only my left shoulder blade feels its solid presence as my right lifts to give space enough for my hand to dance across these lines…

I feel the pressure of the particular position required for holding a pen and writing… it intensifies as these words pour forth – and the barista pours another coffee for the next in a steady stream of coffee seekers – what else do they seek…

My right foot bounces, light, almost weightless in the air while my left is grounded in the center of the bar that braces the adjacent stool…

In my ears I can feel the presence of my earbuds, and I hear you…

SNAPSHOT:

I am sitting, sipping a latte, writing, and talking in Greek-lish to my Greek boyfriend who is currently five thousand some miles and 8 hours away from the spot where we once shared a coffee mazi… in the warmth of the Starbucks in Beloit, WI, on a sunny Sunday in February…

This is a picture that would have not so long ago seemed unbelievable—you know, because of the drinking coffee part, of course… J

Who would have thought? How could I have ever even begun to spin such an image into my mind, let alone know what steps to take to make it my reality…

And yet…

And now…

The is where I am right now…

A year ago might have found me in a similar setting, but on the other side of the Atlantic – perhaps in a café in Halandri… Marveling at how I got there – again, another picture I wouldn’t believe had I not seen it – nai, lived it! – myself…

And the exact words spun and journaled then have been replaced with new. Similar worries cycle through with a new nuance – plot twist! but same story…

I find myself, though, wondering where next February 26th will find me…

I find myself working with and through the same struggles and intentions to really and fully be where I am right now… And that’s why I repeat :

This is where I am right now…

And again :

This is where I am right now.

Where are you?