Bianca

What a funny little day it was!

I’ve been feeling a tad tired lately so I dragged Indie the Awesome Hubby to the beach nice and early in the morning. Since I saw he was in a draggable mood, I dared to pre-drag him to a sweet cafe that has just opened up before dragging him to the beach. He didn’t resist.

In said cafe, we met a lovely American family who were there with their three sons who were in their teens or early twenties.

We don’t do small talk for more than 3 seconds so just about the three second mark into our acquaintance, we started talking about love, relationships, religion, life purpose, spelunking, conspiracy theories, the evils of banking, the importance of being independent = bitcoin, cults and death. We recommended the book The Preparation by Doug Casey and Matt and Maxim Smith, which every young man should read. The discussion was quite lovely, as were the family and the boys, and we parted with smiles.

We had a quick and very pleasant chat with the owner of the cafe, who had moved to SV from California, and were happy to learn he hadn’t had a terribly maddening experience setting up his cafe through notorious Spanish style bureaucracy, and headed to the beach.

On said beach, we met a lovely American family who were there with their three daughters who were in their teens or early twenties.

We don’t do small talk for more than 3 seconds so just about the three second mark into our acquaintance, we started talking about religion as they were there to do some volunteering with their church and suddenly we were knee deep in Jesus and bible discussions. We agreed on some things, disagreed on others. The discussion was quite lovely, as were the family and the girls, and we parted with smiles.

Off we went, my Schinkie and I, discussing how and why people believe what they believe and what beliefs we have that people roll their eyes at.

We have many! And it’s all good! Eye rolling is actually great exercise for the eyes. Maybe the more they listen and roll their eyes, the better they will see? And so will we. And in this world, we don’t all have to agree.

All four parties—the two families with kids of three, my Indie and me—all from different religions. Each religion’s authorities swearing they are the absolute truth, the only truth, the blessed chosen ones, and the only chosen ones for sure, and everyone else will go to hell. And no one else finds this funny? To me it’s all so giggly.

“But that’s what the first books says.” So does book number two and three… And fifty.

We took our usual walk all the way to the end of the beach where the rocks get uncrossable unless you can levitate and I made Indie do some Instagram husbanding and now I have photos.

On the way back, I saw a phone on the sand. To its left was ample stretch of sand, exposed by the low tide. To its right were very flirtatious waves of the rising tide which were one little ripple away from a slurpy swallow. We rescued it.

To anyone else, that was a phone, to us it was an anchor that kept us there, turning our intended quick medicinal walk of sunlight, grounding and a quick dip into a few hours of waiting. We were waiting for the phone to ring, for the owner to come up using GPS location trickery or for us coming across someone frantically pacing up and down, looking for something.

None of that happened.

Someone in a local WhatsApp group told us how we might find the name of the owner under a ‘medical emergency’ tab and there it was: Josh Miller. But what was not there was Josh Miller himself.

It’d been about over two hours now and the phone was there forgotten, deserted, unringing. “I’m going to go down that way and see if I can find this guy,” said hubby.

What unfolded was him coming across a bunch of wet and salty looking young guys with wet and salty surfboards under their arms.

“Do you guys have a friend called Josh Miller?” says hubby. “I am Josh Miller,” says one. “Well, we have your phone.”

An entirely unsurprised and lucky Josh Miller was thus reunited with his phone before he even had the time to realize that it was missing coz he was busy floating on the waves, blissing out on his surfboard.

Liberated from the phone, we left the beach behind and headed left instead of right, further from our home but closer to the acai bowl we have been substituting for ice-cream in our favorite little spot in El Tunco.

We parked. “We will see Rohini,” said hubby, the lover, the knower, the prophet. We go to El Tunco very frequently and over the past three years I think we have only bumped into Rohini once. We entered the acai place only to stumble upon our smiling, wise friend Rohini who has three working eyes, two that you can see and one hidden one in the middle, a bit further inward.

There is something hubby and I are trying to decide. He says black, I say white. And so we ask Rohini, which color without saying who wants what. Black says she. Was this why we were here, at this time precisely? Could be… And the clock hadn’t even struck three… And already a day of beautiful serendipity.

(Disclaimer: We bumped into Rohini again this week, a few days after I wrote this post.)

#ElSalvador #PlayaSanBlas