Tattooed love boys and girls fiddle on their phones and deign to converse with one another.
Stevie Wonder plays—the double and triple album era. He once recorded a triple album called The Secret Life of Plants. That needs to be playing in here. I’ll alert the management. I know someone who works here who loves plants. In fact, the cafe has plants.
A barista cleans the windows without purposeful intent. DH Lawrence once wrote that if you’re going to make a stool or make pudding, make it well.
I don’t understand why people reappear in my life and then turn around and disappear.
Great high ceilings in here.
“When you can’t get in traction,” wrote Henry Miller, “Reverse and get unstuck.” That seems to be good advice for writing and life.
I interviewed with the Chinese for an English teaching position. I’m not sanguine about my chances. Will anyone hire me? I need a dog as a boss.
Who are these people in the cafe and their work? Do they use their hands besides touching screens? Are they handless jobs?
I see some cultural magazines from The City on a counter. I used to read them. I’d rather read a user agreement these days. More relevance.
Not far from here I once paid $40 a month in rent to live in a house with four other people while attending grad school. That City is long gone.
This cafe needs a micro lending library. Get some literature cross-pollination going in and around here.
I always do a double take when I see someone reading in public anymore. No one is reading in the cafe.
My great collaborator arrives soon. A strategy of rapprochement succeeded. We’ll hash out ideas to reinvent micro publishing. I relish these moments of hashing between us.
What is the meaning of the verb “to hash?” I don’t know. I’m not going to look it up.
I’ve spent more on coffee in the last six hours than a can of Yuban costs.
Strawberries are out of season but a strawberry mind is on my mind.
I wrote a sonnet channeling Rilke and Prince. I write a sonnet about every decade.
Where are dogs taking me in my writing?
I met sincere kindness in this cafe a couple of months ago. It is changing my life.
Does one have to become a dog to write more authentically about humans? There is an extensive literature in this approach that indicates the best dog books are books written by dogs and they are about humans.
I’ve prepared several versions of my “blasting-to-smithereens” statement that I’m considering sending to someone who needs to hear it and start over. But how do you know if you should send such a statement? You don’t. By not sending it, am I taking the high road? It doesn’t feel like it. But sometimes when contemplating an action or inaction, the high road can’t be seen. You can always see the gutter.
My father quoted Emily Dickinson the other day: “The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.” Is that soul sick? Many experts on therapy think so. I don’t. I think that soul thrives. The shut door doesn’t mean it’s permanently shut. It can be opened by the shutter at any time, and someone can also knock. It might even be an unsolicited knock. I’ve recently discovered that can still happen.
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