Ka

Sitting in coffee shops on your own can either mean two things.  Either you become invisible or chatty mac chatterson.  This week I’ve been both.  Same coffee shop, two days apart and the worlds I found myself could be no further different.

I am currently reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and find myself drawn into a world that is so familiar and yet so far removed from anything I’ve ever experienced in a book.  They are absorbing to say the least, yet the concept that keeps screaming at me from the pages is ka.  Ka, like destiny but not, is the unstoppable force of the universe, or universes.  One of the characters describes it like an oncoming cyclone, you can worry about it as much as you like but nothing is stopping that thing from arriving all by itself.  It’s those events in your life that are so destined that you have no choice but to let them happen, because they will anyway, no matter how you fight it.

Ka, outside of King’s stories, is the existence of an Egyptian soul.  It’s the bit that travels to the great river to meet Anubis and await the feather trial.  It is your Ka that’s weighed and checked to see whether you were a good human or not and I think King’s version takes a little of that as well.  However, it is now, more than ever, sitting alone in coffee shops, that I realise my ka these days may not come screaming and blowing like a cyclone, but sitting alone in coffee shops being ignored and included in conversations that mean nothing and everything all at the same time.

I am no stranger to unrequited love.  I seem to have based my adult life on the concept and have lingered for quite a long time in its pain and beauty.  The thing about unrequited love is that while you get to feel its pain, longing and burden of constant thought, you also get the safety of never being truly hurt.  The only hurt is that of the self inflicted kind, like an mounting and everlasting hangover.  The last object of such pain and insufferable love has been more intense than most, but finally, and my inner circle will say, at long fucking last, the shine is beginning to fade.  

Conversation one in my coffee shop was the chatty mac chatterson version.  I sat, smiling into my latte, as two men in their late 40s – early 50s debated the pros and cons of their latest storm photographs, exchanged tips on post edits and talked about time in the storm. I smiled and listened and pretended to keep reading my book.  You see latest object of unrequited love (LOUL) is also into that, and I’ve listened and nodded to a thousand conversations just like it.  The conversation then moved on to films.  The debate between Star Wars and Star Trek arose and my silent smiles could no longer be ignored.  Man one looked at me and said “can you hear this rubbish?”  I laughed and added my two cents, for what it was worth.  Twenty minutes later, we are still arguing.  But the argument has moved from films to an existential discussion about comparing what is essentially, apples and oranges.  “You see you can’t compare an apple to an orange because they don’t have enough in common to be able to compare.” Said Man Two for the tenth time.  “They are just too different.”   I’ve also had that conversation with LOUL.  Over and over and over again.  

Watching the other man, who just wanted polite conversation with a little bit of fun and a comment from his mate about what he liked better, was infuriating followed by hilarious.  In him, I noticed all of the things that I do with LOUL.  I push for a simple answer from a human that is overly analytical, always right and incapable of just liking something because it makes them happy.  I got up and wished the gentlemen well in their discussion.  The one like me laughs and says, “Yeah I’ll need it.  When you come back there could be a chalk outline here on the ground and who knows whose it will be!”  We both laughed and I drove away.

Conversation two, same coffee shop, different table.  A woman in her late 30s (I’m being nice) and a man in his early 40s are sitting beside me.  Her body language screams friends and his less so.  Their relationship is clearly platonic but their conversation is unfair and loaded.  He talks about his house plans, keeps things friendly but aloof and consistently turns the conversation back to her.  She barely notices and takes every cue to fall into a story of her complicated life.  She even talks about her current boyfriend and her unreturned affections.  She tells a long story about a massage I never wanted to hear, but did, and then articulates that it is she who hands out all of the physical touch, the love, the affection and he, the current boyfriend, swallows it greedily without gratitude or return.  He listens patiently and nods and reaffirms her worth in all of the right places.  They leave me alone in the coffee shop again and after a morning at the doctors screaming KA at the world, it hits me.  Not like a tonne of bricks, but a clean sheet that’s been thrown over top of you while someone else makes the bed, when it just settles.  I am that man and that woman.  I nod and smile, I turn the conversation back to the LOUL and I let him tell every story.  I am her.  I hand out the affection without gratitude and return and continue to do so because he likes it.

Hiding in my coffee shop I have been ignored and included, but mostly I have seen myself in the lives of random strangers.  My story, no matter how unique I would like it to be, is just like that of everybody else.  We are all just searching for our people.  Our ka-tet of humans that will make our journeys to nowhere a little more enjoyable. And my ka-tet better contain a man who can argue the difference between apples and oranges but in the end he better be able to tell me which one he likes better.  If I believe King and his Roland, ka will find a way no matter what I do and if I am destined for such a ka-tet, they will arrive in their own time, it is already done.

So until then I will continue to sit in coffee shops and listen to the stories that makeup this world.  Because there is absolutely nothing better than coffee, a good story and the interactions of strangers.