Blending With Blenz

Nice soft jazz coming through the speakers up high above my head. Every once in a while there's the sound of the various coffee machines and grinders in the background as the girls prepare the orders for the continuous flow of people that come through and order their café lattes, cappuccino, espressos or if they're like me hot chocolate to warm their insides. Not a bad idea on this cool Sunday afternoon where the wind coming off the Okanagan Lake bites at exposed skin. It feels good to come in out of the cold and get a cup of nice hot brew into you.

I am perched on one of those high bar stools next to a counter facing a huge wall of windows. From the corner where I am, I can observe what goes on outside as well as what goes on inside. It's like when I write a piece in the 3rd person and I speak of myself in the form of "she". There too I become the observer as I write about what I see on the inside and what I see on the outside. That is how it feels as I sit here and type on my laptop - like I have a foot in three different worlds. Ah, wait a minute, I only have two feet....oh, well you know what I mean.

There are four people here using laptops, myself being one of them. I must say I'm the only gray haired yuppie, the others are teeny bobbers, or at least that's what they look like to me. It’s funny how everyone looks so young now. Illusions of what it used to be run through my head but reality stares back at me in the form of my reflection in the screen of my laptop. I am a different person now, and as a friend of mine recently told me, "I am comfortable with my age and in who I am and who I've grown to be."

I’m sitting here relaxing and I find myself getting lost between the thoughts that just float through my mind, and the various people that are going by on the street in front of me. Right now there’s a young man with a blue ring tangling from his left ear, a silver one in his nose, and two or three more studs of some kind that have been inserted through his chin somehow and I don’t particularly want to know how. At the street light is a homeless person with a hat pulled down over his ears and covering his forehead up to his eyeballs. He pushes a Safeway cart which holds all of his belongings as he makes his way across the street heading in my direction.

Now there are two young ladies I'd guess in their early twenties, waiting to get across the street. They are obviously very much in love, holding each other around the waist, looking into each other's eyes, speaking words that matter and brings laughter to their lips. The light changes color they change positions. They switch to holding hands and make their way across and on to wherever it is they are going. And on the sidewalk right beside me a lady with a ..........Lorraine? Oh my God! I can't believe it. I haven't talked to her since we had our, should I say, differences of opinion on the email group a year or two ago. But sure enough, there she is, there we are, face to face with only a window between us..........I just love how life is so full of surprises.

If nothing else, I pride myself in not standing still and on working through stuff so that when a situation presents itself again there is no old stuff standing in the way and I have a clean slate to operate from. It makes life so much more pleasant than when I used to hang on to everything as if it was going to add riches to my life when all it did was make me spin my wheels and keep me stuck in the same places. Yes, life is much more different now and in many ways much sweeter than it used to be. There's a certain amount of wisdom that comes with those gray hairs, wrinkled hands and much as I hate to admit it, protruding belly.

I went to an awesome service this morning at the Center for Spiritual Awareness and after the service I walked four or five blocks to this Blenz coffee shop on the corner of Bernard Avenue and Water Street. I like this place and what it offers - so much so that I just might come back tomorrow. From what I read on their bulletin board as I walked in, they are going to have live music every Monday night starting at 7 p.m. Yes, I think I just might do that – come and relax and enjoy the music in a place where the energy blends well with my words and offers a nice interlude to my day. Anyone care to join me?