Copyright ? FLECHINA ARCHER, 2002. All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

"What are you laughing at?" Addie asked.

"I don't know," I answered, sipping the bitter French Roast Coffee. "It all just seems so absurd." Across the small table in the coffee shop sat Addie, dressed in her neat white gi, her karate uniform, the top fastened with the multi-colored belt of an instructor. We didn't have to fill the air with words. We could enjoy each other's company in comfortable silence as we had for so long. Sometimes words just get in the way. Through the silence we heard the sounds of other people outside the coffee shop. It was Saturday, our busy day.

Addie finished her juice and said that she had to get to her next class. When she left, I was alone in the Flying Yoni Coffee Shop. Next door was the dojo where Addie, Robert, and Warren were warming up for their karate class.

It was too bizarre to have happened, and yet, I had my journals to prove it. I opened a new journal, blank, empty, waiting for me to fill the pages with my reflections on what happened each day. Since I was in college, I had reserved a few minutes each day to make that day more real, to make it concrete. Then the day would stand still so I could think about it, remember it, mull it over, and make it my personal property. As the journals piled up, I put them in boxes. Every three or four years, I packed the boxes away in the attic of my mother's house. By my side on the bench of the booth were my last two journals. Others from the past two years were upstairs in my apartment.

Under the sign outside that said this was the Flying Yoni Dojo and Coffee Shop hung three others: Juice Bar, Yoga Center, Women's Center....