It was hard to miss Jerry in the corner holding court over the bran muffin. Flurries of judgement and wisdom flying across coffee dappled pages as he sentenced a large cup of Paruvian Dark Roast to be ******.
7 am Dan never flinched steeling his tenured chair at a spot one section of stir sticks away calculably just out of reach of the regularly scheduled tantrum.
An auburn-haired newbie fanes camoflage peeking over two pages of Obituaries she never intended to read. Her raised and nearly detached eyebrows hover above the dateline like a magic trick.
And on every table fall scattered leaves of press print trees unsorted and littered with intent by careless absorbers of trivia.
Disconnected ear-budded footnotes of humanity see nothing hear nothing using the disarrayed World News as enormous coasters unmoved by hyper-ventilating compulsives pushing panic buttons through desperate quests to uncover one alphabetically organized set of local news.
Of the papers not strewn the remnant holds anxious on a distant wall a throng of flopping rabbit-eared step children dangling precariously from unaccomodating magazine racks like smoky orphans from windows in a fiery building. Disordered. Disrespected. Discarded...words are Jews in the holocaust.
Death of a voice. We are irreverent in our silence diminishing genius through apathy put off by the imposition to be challenged choosing disposable principles above responsible knowledge. Everything is disposable - cameras, cars, relationships, loyalty, babies...and wisdom - crumpling Pulitzer prize authors and discarding WW2 veterans just to get to the cartoons.