ST. SIMON AND AN ISLAND

O.K. So who is St. Simon anyway? Is he the one you pray to if you have lost something and need to find it? My Catholic Mom would know. But I’m thinking that he must have been very good to get an island named after him. A nice tropical island with palm trees, ferns, warm breezes, The Cloister, and the rich and famous. Lucky for me, I have a friend who lives on this island and another friend who can drive longer than two hours!

So my friend and I decided to take a Thelma and Louise trip to see our mutual friend on this island. We didn’t take a gun. We weren’t planning on shooting anyone or driving off a cliff when our stay was over. But we were planning on having fun, relaxing and talking a lot. A Brad Pitt look-alike who may cross our path while on this venture wouldn’t be a bad thing to encounter.

Well . . . little did my friend know that on our second day she was going to get a Reiki session that would leave her emotionally depleted for the rest of the day not to mention those massage table dents left on her face that only a two-year-old’s skin could bounce back from in less than 24 hours. When she came out from her session and walked to the car, I felt for her. “Ouch!” I wondered what she really went through as no one gave out any information. It was a mystery, and I had never heard the term 'Reiki' before, so my mind began to conjure up the scene:

There she was in the subdued lit room with the vague essence of lavender and vanilla floating in the air like leftover herbal remedies that couldn’t make up their minds whether to leave the room and free the space of their presence or whether they should stay and cling to the next person like Petouli oil on a 1970's hippie's tie-dyed clothes. With the quiet, subtle relaxing sounds coming from the six-disc changer . . . would it take THAT long? . . .  she was told to get under the freshly washed sheets. Felt pretty good so far. Was that a giant heating pad she felt underneath her that was making her feel warm and relaxed already? She settled her face into the headrest and breathed. “Ahhhhh, she thought, I get to do this for an hour and a half”.

An hour and a half later she thought, “Damn!! I’m never doing that again! I’m exhausted, disoriented, and confused”. Come to find out, it wasn't a massage I thought she would be getting, but some kind of energy work to rid her of negative energy. I think it doused all energy that she had before she went in.

I felt sorry for my friend. I hoped she would recover in time for the long drive home the next day because, if I had to take over the wheel, we might land in Okeephaknowkee, phonetically speaking. I would surely have to pray to St. Simon at that point for I would be a lost soul on the road to nowhere with my friend asleep in the passenger seat. She’d wake up, look around and exclaim, “Are those prairie dogs?”

Yep, and a few tumbling tumbleweeds to boot, cowgirlfriend.

So what am I trying to say here?

Go take a Thelma and Louise trip with someone who likes to drive. You may want to buy a verbal device that will technotell you in a soft female voice to ‘turn right at the next light’ so that you won’t land up in Nowheresville with a drooling companion who couldn’t continue at the wheel after the eleventh hour. Darn! Maybe a shorter trip would be a better idea, but life is short and long trips are waiting.

Go!!!

(c) nancy 7.16.2009