Bookstores used to be my chosen place in which to write, back when Barnes & Noble used to battle Borders Books & Music along Wolf Road, but this country has seemingly given up reading and learning in favor of social media and bullshit.
Today, I find a blank space for writing at any cafe where I can sit with a cup of tea or decaf coffee and let the blog posts and project ideas run in handwritten trails across the lines of paper in a pretty Coach notebook. It’s so pretty it doesn’t mind my run-on sentences – rather, it indulges in them, letting me luxuriate in awkward and unnecessary phrases, losing myself in extra words for the sort of extra person I’ve finally learned to embrace.
On some nights, I’m one of the last people left in the cafe. I can feel the workers’ antsiness, the same feeling I would get when a customer came in five minutes before closing at Structure. How I loathed them for that, and the way they would sometimes eye me and intentionally pull apart a sweater wall I’d just finished putting in place. People do love their little plays of power, especially when they don’t have any of their own.
My march of words rounds the corner and winds its way back to where it began. Swirling around the edge of a coffee cup, it surrounds a wooden stir-stick, somehow stirring of its own volition, but only in my mind. I catch the reality of the scene before letting on what I think I’ve seen. We are, most of us, on the edge of going crazy, so we chalk it up to the surreal.
A surreal sip of cafe culture.
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