It's natural to be curious about the folk who inhabit your life - well, isn't it? Some individuals are certainly open, or shall we say "up front," about who they are and what their very important outlook on life happens to be. Quite contrary to this rabble of pedestrian traffic, however, is the rare inscrutable one.
An old lady passes by my home daily and I peer down at her elderly yet still somewhat spry frame from my drawing room window. Without any variation in routine whatsoever, she stops dead at the same spot - a little break in the waist-high stone wall - and leans into the smoothly cupped-out hollow. Her midriff and elbows rest upon stone polished by wind and water come from the sea and her chin sits solidly in her upturned palms. Given the angle of my window relative to the depression in the stone wall where Madame resides, I have no difficulty ascertaining her stance.
What does she gaze upon so intently each day, from noon till one, whatever the weather? Beyond the surf there lies a plump and verdant island and, farther still, the open sea. Does she patiently but futilely await a love long ago lost at sea? Perhaps she watches the sky in the hope of being taken unto her deity's warm and protective embrace. Is she, therefore, awaiting something or someone, or is she simply wiling away the time, longing to escape the mainland and adopt the barbaric tribal life on that mist-enveloped tropical isle?
I am as perplexed as I am curious, but I do love a mystery and shall be content to spin a yarn or two at the old dame's unwitting expense.
Heaven forbid I should go down to the wall, make her acquaintance and - when the time is right - ask her to explain herself.
What fun would that be?
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