SIMPATICO

Sometimes, when you are eating Pad Thai in a restaurant, you look up and a see a young couple in the corner. Their meal hasn't arrived and they wouldn't care if it had been forgotten entirely. They are hand and soul locked, entranced in each others eyes; no, more than entranced, or drunk, or bedazzled, or emmeshed, they ARE each other eyes, and you just feel simpatico, and you exhale and smile with a feeling that everything starts again, even blind hope or puppy love, and a warmth even warmer than the chile in the pad thai flows up from the pit of your stomach.

Other times, like last night, I observe Tommie chained up outside and watching my every mouthful. That's a kind of sympatico as well. Perhaps not from his perspective. Thats more a kind of "why are you eating when I am hungry " feeling. But it's sympatico from my side, for this little guy for whom food, a cuddle, a walk and a ride in the car is the purest joy.

Then a young Chinese woman walks past, amongst the tall buildings of Crows Nest in the back alley where my restaurant is, and stops and gently strokes my little dog, until he forgets about me, the joy of the attention of strangers getting the better of him, and then even more so when she pulls out a chip recently purchased from Macdonalds and throws it to him. Throwing the chip was a smart idea because Tommie's like a crocodile where chips are concerned. Fingers could be lost. She smiles ... he smiles his dog smile back at her ... simpatico.

Stuff happens when you eat Pad Thai in a restaurant in Crows Nest. Nearly everyone is Asian making the scene through the window almost like a one from Blade Runner, more so if it was raining and steam was coming out of the gutters. One after another young Asians walk pass. I like them a lot. I wonder about their lives in China, so different to this place which must seem like a kind of heaven. They look so happy and a feeling strikes me that this migration is a success, that things are good ...  simpatico.

But no one ... right at this moment .. not Tommie with a chip ... or the young girl delighted to have given it to him .. nor me observing between mouthfuls of Pad Thai ... is as happy as the lovers who haven't moved ... the world lives inside them alone ... way beyond simpatico.