Saturday, September 12, 2015

Spill it, Crawl it, Urban Sprawl it!

Today Noah & I went to a Pippi Longstocking party at someone's house we know from the cafe. It's a perfect illustration of what we're calling "spill." Relationships begun in the cafe grow to the point that the cafe can no longer contain them. They literally spill into phone calls, work spaces, homes, and events. And the relationships are therefore no longer dependent on the cafe in order to carry on.

It's funny to think about how many different relationships spilled just today. Driving home from a story-crafting collaboration in the cafe, Noah and I saw one of the baristas walking down the sidewalk. We rolled our windows down and screamed, "Hey! Need a ride?!" Turns out he didn't, but that was crazy. We parked in the neighborhood of the party house and as we exited our car, the postal worker pulled up beside us in her truck, slowed, and said, "Hey, didn't you guys used to live over the hill?" Turns out she subbed for a while for our postal worker and remembered us. We asked how she's managing the heat wave and thanked her for delivering the mail despite it, and as she pulled away, Noah yelled, "I LOVE YOU!" Her brake lights came on as she leaned out the open door and said, "Well I love you too!" 

Before we even started on the epic steps to the party, my phone rang. It was my dear cafe pal. Why was she calling? Oh, no reason, just to tell me that I've become her closest friend, that she's so grateful for me, and that she loves me. And I got to ditto her. After the party, we drove to cafe pals' Doug & Linda's where Noah was set to have a sleepover. As we climbed yet another set of stairs, this time with a Buzz Lightyear pillowcase full of jammies and stuffed animals, I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed. By the lives that are entwining and integrating in beautiful ways, yes in the middle of superficial, 8-laned, smoggy Los Angeles.