At my age - I do not expect too many surprises. I still get
to meet interesting people and see extraordinary scenery; I still have the
chance to try new things and to have my adventures, but most of those things
are somewhat planned. I see those sights, meet those people, have those
adventures because I do something that allows them to happen. For example I
look forward to meeting some new, interesting people or seeing something I have
not noticed before when I hitchhike, but that only happens because I decide to
hitchhike. That events happen is not really surprising - in fact I sort of
anticipate them happening and when they don't - I am disappointed. But last
week two things happened that were just a little bit different.
I was talking to my neighbour and somehow we started talking
about dowsing for water. I have always been a bit cynical about that particular
bit of folk lore. We did have a well "witched" 35 or so years ago,
and the person was accurate. But there is something about believing that a
willow stick held in the hands of the right person will dip at a specific place
and that there will be water in the ground that strikes me as weird. It may be because I am somewhat of
a natural cynic or perhaps because I just do not trust people. For whatever
reason, it is easier for me to assume that a person is conning me. However my
neighbour said he could do it, went into his shed and pulled two mental rods
each about three feet long with a right angle bend 2/3 of the way down the rod.
He held them loosely in his hands, pointing out from his body and as he walked
down the street - every time he came to a buried water pipe the rods swung parallel
to the depression/cracks in the road. I was quite convinced that I understood
his trick. He was suggesting that the cracks in the road were the consequence
of shoddy road construction done over sewer/water pipes. Whenever he came to
such a spot he manipulated the rods so
that they would move. Quite frankly the rods move so quickly and definitively I
was almost embarrassed at the obviousness of his trick. Then he offered the
rods to me.
I told him that I had no affinity with anything of that sort
and I was sure that they would not work for me. I was giving him a graceful way
out - but he insisted and so I tried it - knowing that it would not work. And
they did work!!! With absolutely no effort on my part, with the rods held loosely,
they swung parallel to the cracks in the road. Not just once but every time. I don't understand why and I don't care. It was
just fun to do something totally outside of my experience.
On Saturday I was at the market. It was wet and it was cold.
It was raining when we set up and it was raining when we packed up seven hours
later. The fact that anyone came to the market was in my mind a bit of a miracle.
I did not expect to sell anything - it was far too miserable for anyone to browse.
But a woman did come by and decided to buy a shawl. I was , of course,
delighted. We did our business, I gave her some washing instructions, we
chatted a bit and then she left. A few minutes later I saw her across the
street and realized that I had not told her something - something that I say to
all of my customers who spend a lot of money and that is - "When I give
something I have made to one of my kids or a relative and they say thank you -
that is really nice but they would say thank you whether or not they liked it.
But when someone buys something from me, something that in my mind is a lot of
money - it makes me feels good, it validates the work that I have done and I
get excited to know that someone likes and appreciates my work as much as I do.
The lady was told me that she was an artist and had just
sold one of her works. She had decided to take the money and buy something
special just for her. She understood the joy of an artist (although I never
call myself that) in finding someone who wants their work. We hugged. I have
never hugged a customer before but it felt right. Somehow for that brief moment,
we stopped being salesperson and customer and became two people who knew what
it meant when someone else liked how you spent your day.
