Tuesday 20 May 2008

Coffee Beans and Sailing Dreams

So, Ciarin and I are back together and things are going well. I love him so much. It's been a year now since we first started seeing each other.

There is a nagging thought about how it's all going to fit together, but I am letting go for now. So long as we keep working towards our respective goals and so long as we want to be together, we will find a way forward. I have faith.

More and more, I dream about adventuring and being on the sea with him. More and more, it seems possible. I can see the sails leaning into the wind. I hold my head up high so that my hair is pulled off my face and trails behind me. The air is salty and my cheeks are windwhipped. I can feel the boat swaying and nudging its way along. We are going somewhere. The journey is in progress. I dream I have found my sea legs, no longer sickened by the movement.

When I last visited his boat, it was as if I'd seen it for the first time. Not just an awkward place to live, but somewhere with the potential for movement, grace and power.

I gave him a gift for his birthday that makes him smile - a baseball cap that says CAPTAIN. Cheesy, I know, but it suits him. He is currently growing a Bluto-like beard that seems fitting. Perhaps he is feeling more like the Captain of his own 34-foot sailing ketch.

My own, more immediate, dream of being a counsellor is also just about ripe for the picking after years of time, effort, energy and process. Later this week, I will have my first on-line advertisement and I'm proud of that. Soon, too, there will be a website. I am lucky to have plenty of help. Ciarin will be making the site with help from his mentor, Mark.

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Last Saturday I helped on a stall at the Devon County Show promoting Fair Trade, something I feel quite strongly about. I enjoyed giving out free Fair Trade chocolate samples. I put a lot of smiles on people's faces! It was good fun, though I was exhausted by the end.

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Last night, I watched the docu-film, Black Gold. It really doesn't seem fair that coffee producers get such a raw deal, while their coffee is sold in the West for so much. Why should the farmers and other labourers go without basic food, shoes and schoolteachers, while coffee companies in the West make an absolute fortune? Why has the amount paid for coffee to growers gone down in the last thirty years while the cost of coffee in the West has gone up? It feels so disrespectful, so wrong.

Well, the coffee beans looked beautiful in the film, being grown, picked, sorted, roasted, ground and tasted. I found myself going to my local Co-op today and buying some Fair Trade coffee - even though I don't normally drink the stuff!