mindful mondays

The Mamas and the Papas are playing in the background, on the speaker above my right ear and the barista behind the bar is singing California Dreaming. A skinny giant of a man drops in to deliver business cards and he seems awkward with his hands tucked deep into his jogging pants.

The barista is Australian. She’s wearing combat boots and a Sinead O’Connor shave and she’s having a hard time understanding the northern giant. She asks if he wants a coffee, he mumbles something about the morning which, in short, is meant to mean yes. The guy outside with the suede boots and red checker shirt and jeans folded twice neatly at the bottom puts his cigarette out and brings his empty cup inside and the caramel coloured milk sticks to the side of the glass and I presume he is off to work like everyone else.

People come and go with their large lattes and white coffees and black americanos and Monday Monday comes on and I wonder if this is what they mean by mindfulness. The careful observation – when everything in your head goes quiet and everything is… what it is.

The London Borough of Jam preserves and the Spring espresso blend and the old milk bottles filled with water and sugar that looks like brown crystals in glass cups on wood tables and the retro font of an old American typewriter and people reading the newspaper and me, watching the world go by, like Alice through a one way looking glass.

It smells of spring and coffee and my shift doesn’t start until 2:00 and the music is a bit too loud and the mindfulness is slipping away and I find myself wanting to control what is into what I want it to be.

But of course we all know that there is very little we can actually control in this world and so… I let go.