Breakfast in the Park

It's a peaceful morning in the city.  I sit in a quaint little café at the edge of the park and indulge in the Style section of the New York Times.  There's a right way and a wrong way to start your day, and I have stumbled, very happily, on a workable solution.  I take another sip of green tea, turn the page, and feel very lucky to have found this little place.

            It wasn't easy considering that every morning I wake up on the same low-budget cruise ship traveling from mini-mall to mini-mall throughout the Caribbean.  I am really on the Lido Deck, having spooned my food from the buffet after standing in line.   I am surrounded by fat men in swimsuits and other varieties of crass displays.  The tune "Summer Lovin'" from Grease, part of the regular music loop, kicks in a little too loudly, and threatens to steal me away from my tiny little café.  I take another sip of my drink relieved how the green tea masks the briny flavor of the tap water.

            I have found a great deal of contentment in finally knowing that I have in some way overcome this coarse, gaudy, and intellectually bereft environment.  I am already hearing that long "ahhhh" of relief, once I do find that peaceful part of the city and sit under the yellow awning of that pleasant smelling café.  There will be a smile on my face as I remember wearing the tacky red or yellow colored shirts and doing the assortment of mindless labors I must do to get through the day.

            If there is anything I have learned this time around it is that we are responsible for cultivating our own joy and that happiness does not coming from things or anyone else than ourselves.  Not that they can't help – significantly of course.  I think particularly of first-time (and last-time) cruiser and new exceptional friend, Lacey, and how much I enjoy our email exchanges as she struggles to keep sanity while overworking herself.  I also think, quite warmly, of Jo, who is doing acupuncture on a ship in the Pacific and the cozy feeling I get from knowing that she thinks about me sometimes before she goes to sleep at night.

            Today's good start will pass and I am sure to be mired in stress, ambition, longing, and all the rest, but I think this better mood is starting to stick.  I have become a much more efficient and effective person, plotting all sorts of filmmaking schemes while at sea.  Today I'll work at setting some major milestones and deadlines to keep myself on track and tonight I might go out for a celebration at the crew bar.  I won't stay to late though.  I think my party-till-you-drop days are mostly over.  You can have the party or you can have the café in the morning and the day that follows such a start, but you can't have both.