Serendippity

Philip hadn't wanted to come but his wife insisted. She said it would be good for him, not to mention their marriage. He was too stressed out and going to this retreat would help him "find his center," whatever that meant. Tranquility, perhaps.

Sherry stayed home with the kids while he was away. She could have gone, if proper arrangements had been made but she was very nearly centered herself, she said. She didn't need to go to a retreat. He did.

And so he went to appease her.

It was a bizarre place with unusual guests. When Philip found out his roommate was a kidnapper, he was glad the whole family hadn't come. A hippy, in sloppy apparel and wearing copper rings in his dreadlocks, resided in the hut next door. Philip wasn't sure if the hippy was also seeking his "center" or if he had already found it and, in fact, worked there.

A grasshopper - the retreat's guru or swami or whatever he was - lived in a separate hut and kept to himself as Philip schlepped his bag to his quarters and plopped it on his straw sleeping mat. The tremor began approximately at that moment as if dropping the bag itself had been the cause. He looked at his roommate in alarm and said, "Did you feel that?"

His roommate went about his business which consisted of unwrapping his stash, sapphires, which no doubt were acquired illegally. The kidnapper suppressed a laugh as he tipped his hand, the stones dripping into a zipped pocket. His happy roommate backslapped Philip who was beginning to think he had imagined the shaking.

But then things got worse and the entire hut began to shake. A cappuccino machine, the only appliance in the room, and its chipped cups threatened to topple. Philip skipped from the room and found the hippy next door utterly unflappable.

"What's happening?" he asked, apparently unaware of the commotion.

"Can you not feel that?" Philip shouted.

"Have an apple," the hippy offered, seeemingly apropos of nothing.

"How can you have an appetite at a time like this?

"I can appreciate an opportunity for the soul to be appeased." The hippy propped up his feet before him.

The shaking became worse and it seemed the earth would swallow them all. Philip stepped around the hippy's appendages and ran to the grasshopper's hut. "Earthquake!" Philip was shouting.

The grasshopper was apparently meditating, balancing on an unknown apparatus.

Philip tried to appeal to him again, "Master! Mr. Grasshopper! Earthquake!" He didn't know what else to say to express his urgency.

"My student," the grasshopper began. "I applaud you for coming so far but you can certainly appreciate how far you must yet travel. It is an opportune moment for your comeuppance."

"I don't understand, grasshopper. How can you be so calm? You, the kidnapper, and the hippy. What do that have that I lack, grasshopper?"

"You lack," the grasshopper said looking at Philip, "inner p's."