“The Cafe' - Life As We Live It"

"Hey Ole Man..."

"Hey ole man, how’s your coffee holding up?”  I paused my writing - just more of my scrawling, actually, and looked up.  Her eyes were crinkle-squinched and her lips had that smile.  “God’s gonna get ya…” I said, “Ole man…sheesh…” and motioned toward the empty mug.

”Well it isn’t like you’ve had your normal five or anything yet,” she quipped back as she poured, laughed, then continued on her customer rounds.

I like sidewalk cafes.  You can pause a bit, think things over… and over again if necessary.  Write if you like, watch - everything and everyone… and sip coffee.  And HERE the coffee is actually good and Mary is cute as hell too.

University towns have that certain ‘feel’; so many enthusiastic highs beside the deepest darkest lows - the ones that the daytime soaps just can’t seem to get enough of, let alone get right.  “Guys and Dolls,” I mumbled to myself as I watched so many ‘dreams’ meandering by.  Well, back to the scrawling…

Time has this way of passing without notice when I write.  Focus is seldom an issue regardless of background noise or events.  Yet I sensed eyes looking over my shoulder.  Then came the scraping sound of a chair being pulled up to the table.

”Hi” I said - without thought or pausing or even looking up, trying to finish the current line before it escaped forever.  Then Mary came up beside me, “and you’ll have?” she asked.

The answering voice derailed the train.  “Black coffee " and bring him another too, please.”

I looked up and into a place a man " no man " should ever wander into without malice of forethought - the absolute greenest eyes gazing back into mine.  I could actually breathe but didn’t know if I wanted to… I didn’t even notice Mary writing down the ticket, then turn and walk away.

There’s pretty and beautiful and striking and then - there was her.  I wasn’t at a loss for words - there WERE no words… to say or think or interfere, just the absolute greenest eyes gazing into mine.  It took a moment… “****.” I said and shook my head lightly to break the spell.  Such is the gestalt of captured attention.

”Pardon?”  She laughed out loud… even I KNOW a woman realizes the effect she has on a humble target of opportunity.  “I said… ****,” I answered then chuckled, “You have quite a presence.”

This time she chuckled back, “Yeah, neat isn’t it?”  as she reached and took my journal from the table, flipped a page back, paused and then began to read aloud.

”There are so many echoes
through our lives.
Moments beyond count -
though so few remembered…
each touch our nows
and our being -
and we?
Don’t even see
our present coming, because
our past shades our eyes,
our thoughts, our tastes of existence.”
....She paused looked into my eyes again… smiled.  Then she turned the page and continued…

”I like the thought
of tomorrow…
the taste of it on my lips,
the smoothness of it in my mind.

There’s a FEEL that it has
to me
unlike any other thought
any other wish
construct
presence
desire…
unlike even the touch of…”

...and she stopped, looked up - seemed about to say something, but then just sat back and waited expectantly...

”The absolute greenest eyes
I’d never seen.” I said aloud -
without having to look at the page.

Chris

Format-Contests, word use, count OR time-constraint challenges... time limits - mind limits ~ people and self-imposed reach-for-a-brass-ring-through-the-cell-bars - to prove what?  Inadequacy-ability-mentality or the lack of just... humanity.  I guess when all-is-said-and-undone -Today I am 'something' that apparently yesterday or before the inquisition - I wasn't.

I would guess you can see how I really feel about doing 'challenges' - just for the sake of another's aggrandizement... notice I didn't say I wouldn't - just how I FEEL about doing them.  Chuckling here.  OK, 90 minutes began with the first word on a blank page - go...

"An Hour And 20 Minutes..."

An hour and twenty minutes… sigh.  I’ve an hour and twenty minutes til what?  What will it all mean - then.  The sun might shine or it could be rain, snow, sheet ice.  The heat might kick on all by itself.  A light bulb may actually glow.  I’m listening to the ticks…

Tick…tick…tick - an hour and ten minutes now… Where does the time GO when you’re having such ‘fun’… even pins drop as if encased in molasses pools - soooooooo slowly, barely turning end-over-end-over-end.  It gives an entirely new meaning to a drip-brew coffee maker, and the mind!  The mind races - RACES, in circles yet spirals too… in and in and round and around… but the thoughts - fragments and incoherencies, lost and found then lost and found again and again… threads, so many, many threads - interweaving…weaving…fading into the next construct… tick… tick…

An hour.  Just an hour, another lifetime passed and past and yet to come… a whole **** hour…hour…6o more minutes… then 59… now 58…eventually 57?  57 more minutes… each a little eternity.  Light a cigarette… the flame doesn’t flicker; strange how flames don’t really flicker after all… it’s all in the eye’s sight, what we THINK we see.  Watching the smoke move, inhale and exhale… how does smoke dissipate - expanding and expanding into a universe, a growing ball - ever fading, fading, fading… do we expand and fade-and-fade as well?…

Is it 50 yet?  50, 50, 50… come on 50…will someone give me 50, 50, 50 50…SOLD! - to the young-ole man sitting there in the back row… yay me… 50 minutes… and counting, counting… down and up, and down, and up…

Electricity doesn’t hum you know… it’s the wires vibrating to the electrons racing within.  Some would say it’s the ‘holes’ that flow and electrons just keep falling and falling within… like watching the hubcaps on a moving car - seemingly turning in the opposite direction of the tires motion… like living on the edge of our own universe… like living at all… life at all… flowing, racing, following all the holes, falling within and falling over-and-over and all to get - where?  What was the actual direction of motion?  Where did we go?  Did we go at all?  Threads and threads and threads " weaving, coalescing, expanding, fading… fading…

Its so not easy to lose oneself and yet we try… and find… ourselves looking back from all the mirrors that never were… cascading from all the non-surfaces back and forth and back and forth til we realize the fractals we are… such a pretty design that captures imagination and goes on and on and on til… 35… 35 minutes… 35… then 34.

Strange how coffee too hot to drink is so ****** cold the next instant of awareness… time isn’t linear to awareness ya know?  It has no set place to be or follow.  Awareness is NOW every moment you ARE aware, but not the one - the moments you weren’t.  I’m aware of being me - except when I’m not… threads and threads interweaving.  I CAN feel my fingertips… each ONE… and all of them at once… but not my toes… I can’t feel the smoke I exhale moving through my fingers… I can see it passing through but not feel it… but I AM aware of my fingertips and can still feel each one all at once… and I am aware of the smoke - moving… expanding… I’m thinking, am aware that I’m thinking I’m thinking…but what is it, what am I, in between moments of aware? Of unfeeling?

Tick…tick… 22 minutes… 22… Roses are red, Violets are blue, eternities last just moments - who knew?  22… 21…White noise, echoes without awareness… what really counts? And why?  And to whom?  So many ‘whys’ we have… whys for everything and anything - some our own and some are other’s.  Wise whys, shy whys, lost whys, because whys… ‘it-doesn’t-matter’ whys that ‘mattered-after-all’ whys… and cold coffee… 18…17…

I wonder
at the emptiness
with each breath

because -
its what we do
its who we are
its all there is

its all I have -
just each breath...

to wonder with.

Chris

Each of us has a version, an expectation - if you will, of just what "When" means.  I wandered this place - coffee in hand.  Looking, looking, listening, moving on.  Friends, strangers, nooks and grannies, lil cracks in the walls - windows all, windows to the world of all the places that aren't and yet were... and its Tuesday no less - figures, all visited, ringing so stridently in the ears...

The sounds of silence...

"When..."

When -
we forget
how loud the silence is
at 3AM, then 4 ~
at breakfast - as first a habit
- then just a chore
then an unwanted pause
then... you don't NEED to sit
- even at a table -
to listen...
to your silence.

When -
did you learn to listen to yourself?
Speak the unspoken -
listen to heartbeats echoing...

When -
do you realize being who you are
IS
who you are...

When -
do you look IN the windows
- rather than out?

When do WE
learn how to cry
- without a why?

When...

...all the never-ever-mores
forevers
- closed doors on times
  on dreams
  on moments, lives
...on the whispers

When?

I know
...now.

Chris



© 2012 Chris