I love life’s weird synchronicities.
Last night, I decided to grab food with a friend at the last minute. I picked the closest ramen place to the thrift store where I was scouring the racks for a silk robe (no luck). It wasn’t until I stepped out of the car at the restaurant that I was hit with the realization that I had stood in this exact spot before, 8 years ago.
Back in 2015, just before my 26th birthday, I left the depressing Michigan winter to come stay with my parents in Florida for a couple months- which, of course, turned into a year. Back in those days, I would check the Nahko and Medicine for the People tour schedule every time I planned on traveling, just in case it aligned with any of my destinations.
It always did. To the point where it became a weird running joke.
15+ shows spanning several states and 2 countries, always in line with my intended route. So of course they were playing the first night I landed in South Florida. I trotted up with my usual tune (hey guys, it’s me again, anybody have unused guest list spots?) and assumed my customary position in the crowd. Stage right, 5-10 rows back. Far away enough to enjoy myself, close enough to make faces at my favorite guitar player.
Last night, I stood in that parking lot for a long time, reminiscing about that gig as it all came flooding back. Yes, here was where the food truck was parked, and there was where Hope gave me some of her vegan mac and cheese, and then there’s the tree where I perched like a cat and listened to a crystal bowl sound healing on the parking lot pavement while band members loudly giggled and flirted between the peaceful hippies in their savasana.
Oh, and over here is where Chase handed me a coconut from a tall Dominican fellow who showed up with a bin full of them, expertly whacking off the tops with a cleaver and carving out a scoop to retrieve the delicate meat after drinking the juice. Siri, I believe his name was.
I wrapped up my trip down memory lane and returned to the present for some sub-par ramen before heading down to Miami. On Wednesday nights, I’ll occasionally make the trek through the omnipresent Miami traffic for the Lil Bohemia open mic, a lovely little intimate gathering in an arthouse backyard. That one is a wild synchronicity in itself, being held at the home of Marcus Blake, an artist I had never before met or spoken to, whose portrait has been hanging on the wall in my parents’ condo for the past 8 years. As far as I know, that’s the only print in existence of that particular photograph, and he had no idea it existed at all.
I arrived at the open mic last night and parked on the street to practice ukulele. Shortly, an unfamiliar pickup truck pulled up and parked nearby. I felt a strange sense of connection to the inhabitant of that vehicle, even though I couldn’t see their face. Whoever they were, I kept a close eye as they propped the door open and leaned back in the driver seat, exactly as I was doing, for about 15 minutes.
We both decided to walk in at the same time. He hadn’t noticed me, but we exchanged pleasantries at the gate and went our separate ways. Once inside, I found friends, signed up to play, and settled on a place to sit. I didn’t take note of the plastic bag on the table behind me until the man from the pickup truck walked over to open it and offer up some of its contents. Loquats, fresh from a tree that he had trimmed that day.
I graciously accepted a handful of fresh exotic fruits, and struck up a conversation with the guy, scattered between open mic acts. Eventually, I asked his name.
“Siri,” he said.
I was quiet for a moment. “Do you… did you… have you ever handed out coconuts…”
He laughed. “Yep, I’m the coconut man.”
A random stranger who I had been thinking about only an hour or two beforehand. And it just so happened he had coconuts with him.
And so it was that 8 years later, my first time returning to the place I went my very first night living in Florida, I sat drinking coconut juice on a dark Miami street at 2am with the same man who had given me a coconut on that night in 2015.
Life is wild.
