June 26, 2006--Monday On Mallorca: Rituals

Especially in small towns and villages there is great devotion paid to daily rituals. Since there is rather little to do, these help structure time, and, while creating a sense of regularity, hold the possibility of revealing the miraculous that can be extracted from small, predictable gestures. Also, on the canvas that rituals provide can on occasion be found, admittedly in small, faint strokes-- there is no room for a Titian here—images of insight and wonder. And of course these rituals help keep the void at bay.

One might think the opposite should be true—since there is so little to do why fill up that tiny landscape with predictable things? Shouldn’t one look forward to the unexpected? Wouldn’t that provide more stimulation, more excitement?

It would, and of course that’s precisely the problem—too much excitement and stimulation would shatter the illusions needed to help get one through languid days. They would remind one of what is being missed by having chosen to cling to such a limited world.

For these and other reasons, in this village of Puerto Andratx, we are drawn to our morning coffee rituals because here it is that the quotidian commences and where we wait for the miraculous. Or at least a little something, anything to talk about.

Yesterday, while sitting down to la siempre, the languid “usual,” unknown to us, a pocketbook was found on a bench by the Sea. Ah, a look at its undisturbed contents by those who discovered it revealed that it was owned by an Elizabeth Rita Livsey of Bournemouth, England. Not a familiar name to anyone there, and thus they were confronted with a delicious mystery—what to do, how to locate her.

When Rona and I, as we were moving on to the second of our morning rituals, our second cortados at a second café for, we came upon all that mounting excitement. Did we know anyone with that name? Yes, in fact, incredibly she was a neighbor of ours, up in La Mola. She and her husband Paul used to live in Bournemouth. In fact, we had seen them just an hour before, in the midst of their own version of morning rituals—a long walk beside the Sea. Why not try to find them and let them know the bag had been recovered and that their Sunday would not be ruined by anxiety and calls to various banks back in England.

So after Rona and I had given everyone their descriptions, we came up with a plan and fanned out to search for them. One group of us along Carrer Isaac Peral; another along the waterfront.

And of course, before even ten minuets had passed, we found them arm in arm, as tranquil seeming as the day itself.

Finding them that way, so serene and unconcerned, that in itself would have sufficed to offer yet more evidence that living in this way helps put things in the right order of priority—Credit cards? Drivers’ licenses? Wallets? Cash? Where are they positioned in the great chain of being if placed beside this ancient Sea, under this enduring sky?

But when we told them not to worry, the pocketbook had been found they seemed surprised. Not that it was found, but that it was even missing!

Yet an even deeper message.