Messages Carry in the Wind

I ‘do’ coffee every morning at a café with sea views. I think I live in paradise, surrounded by ocean and nature. I love birds, so this morning when I heard the screeches of white cockatoos playing I took time to stop and ‘smell the roses’. As I looked towards the bird sounds I anticipated white birds flying, but my attention was at first taken by a white piece of paper which was dancing in the wind about 50m from where I stood.

Owners of apartments in the new high-rise nearby had just moved in and I noticed a woman standing on her balcony, also watching the paper perform its special dance. When I first saw the paper it was level with the 10th floor, and as I watched it fluttered higher and higher, left to right and back again. A couple of white cockatoos had perched on a balcony around the other side of the building playing noisily. We all took a few moments to watch the unusual paper dance. The woman on the balcony, I on the ground and the two white birds each enjoyed the performance.

One question was on my mind – where did the paper come from? Had it been dropped off the building and was on its journey down, or had it been scooped up from the ground by the wind? Most likely the wind had swept it off somebody’s table on one of the balconies. I watched for about five minutes as it danced and soared higher before drifting slowly downwards, looking for its new home. Finally it landed on a fifth floor balcony.

It reminded me of a time when I was sitting at a window table ‘doing’ coffee at a friend’s beachfront Italian restaurant when a gust of wind gushed in and swept away the notes we were working on. I ran outside and looked ‘everywhere’ high and low as far as a few shops down the street for the sheet of white A4 paper, but came back to the restaurant empty handed. There was a group of us there at the time and we all laughed about the universe wanting me to enjoy the view, not work. So we had a drink and a few laughs until the sky darkened over with a storm imminent. I love storms, so I left and went home to watch the electric light show from my balcony.

The next day when I returned to the restaurant, my friend placed my lost note-paper on the table in front of me with a laugh. “You know that big storm that blew in off the bay yesterday? A huge gust of wind blew this in the window and it landed right back on the table where you’d been sitting,” she said. That’s synchronicity.