Amsterdam. Monterrey. Coffee.

7/31

Pat O is in to check on an air conditioning unit being installed by a theatre company. Looks likes more than we anticipated. Want to make sure that we don’t overload any circuits leading to blackouts or worse, fires. Need to get our man Jerry in to check this all out. .

Anna comes in with beautiful silk flowers for the Hiroshima event. She shares with me some Japanese traditions regarding flowers, their arrangements and what they mean. She’s doing this as Katherine arrives. She’s got a meeting coming up with Mario so we talk again about the Work Center, the open choir, our ongoing conversation about what this could lead to.

Deacon James in, looking again for Danielle who is working with him on a project. 

A couple wants to get married. He’s from Holland. She’s from Monterrey, Mexico. We talk about my time in Amsterdam, on  my way back from a stressful time in the Middle East. One of the happiest times I ever had alone. Freezing cold. The canal boats with ice breakers. Writing all morning. Museums and tours in the afternoon. Hot pea soup and cheese toast.  Watching late night outdoor hockey in the plaza in front of the American Hotel. Drinking ice cold genver and draughts of beer, the bartender cutting the foamy heads off with a razor. Rijsttafel at the Bali. And my consulting job in Monterrey, discovering I would have to work the whole week relying only on my Spanish. Being invited out to un restaurante tipico, and we say at the same time, un cabritero,  a goat restaurant. I preferred rijsttafel.

The neighborhood man who likes to play the piano comes in. He always brings me coffee. That’s how I think of him, the coffee man. He brings me the coffee. I drink it as I hear him playing old standards in the sanctuary.