Coffee Shop Freewrite...

Tunes:"Silver Trees"//Rocky Votolato


Sometimes I wonder how it is that you can tell when someone is watching you. you know what I mean? It's such a random happening to have some sort of 6th sense for. How is it that the glance of another, or the stare, can be translated across the space that exists between the two people and can be physically felt by the other? Does the degree of intensity make a difference, or duration? Sometimes, I try to test both sides of these questions. Throwing glances and full-on stare downs, indifferent look-overs and thoughtful or questioning moments of being transfixed. It's an incredible phenomenon, I think. And one that has been rarely thought about. Which really impresses me. How is it that in a culture so obsessed with other people, so enamored with interpersonal relations, that this has not been discussed at greater lengths? It truly baffles me.

I do my best thinking in coffee shops.
I'm sitting in one right now, staring out the window at a boy smoking a cigarette. His hair is long, long, long. Curly, too. His shoes are brown and his shirt is green underneath an unzipped, heavy leather jacket. The weather is chilly, but he stares at the cross-walk hatches painted on the street while sucking the nicotine fiercely from his smoke. Looking up at the building behind him, I try to imagine which belongs to him. Does he keep blinds closed, even on dreary days like today? Does he stack picture frames, or jars of condiments on his window panes? Are the Christmas lights blinking on and off, draped in a haphazard way, in his bedroom? Or his living room? Maybe it's his kitchen-- he likes making believe that he's in his Mother's kitchen, which always smelled of pumpkin and nutmeg and cloves and cinnamon this time of year. She liked to have the Christmas tree set up just through the kitchen door, so she could feel the warmth of it's stringed bulbs seep into her skin and into her soul. Maybe having the lights set up as they are in the window frame, he can squint his eyes from across the room and believe that he's back home.
I romanticize the possibilities of this cigarette smoking boy, when in reality, I'm fairly certain his name is Carl and that he plays lead guitar in a local pop-rock band. It's not likely that the Christmas light window is his. What a shame, the Christmas lights could really brighten the place up.

I sip coffee from an enormous, over-sized cup. I laugh to myself when I remember how vehemently I hated coffee not too long ago. Now, I blissfully sip as I pretend to not be watching the old man sitting in the back of the coffee shop. He's been here before, sitting in the same spot-- an over-sized arm chair next to a small reading lamp and in front of a gargantuan mirror. He himself stares at the storefront doors of the coffee shop that open out to Court Square-- the center of this sleepy city. I wonder if he's waiting for someone, or instead waiting for nothing and just sitting his afternoon away.

Store fronts around here remind me of what New York City must be like this time of year- flashy but trite. Still, the second hand stores on South Main create scenes of wintery happiness, despite the recession and global warming and black-friday fatalities. The school year is just about over and my happiness about it is overwhelming. Going to bed happily every night doesn't however stop my bed from hurting my back, or my nose from running or my throat to ache from coughing.

The sky gets dark by five these days, making it hard to read the roman numerals etched in the stone of all the buildings, or the chalked prices of coffee by-the-pound posted above the ordering counter. Lights behind the counter illuminate the bottles of sugary flavors. Hazelnut, cherry, vanilla, caramel. All aglow in warm hues, much like the Christmas lights that still blink in that window four stories above me. Much like the lights strung carefully from tree limbs and porches throughout the city. This time of the year makes all of the tiniest of things feel immensely important, doesn't it? Some stringed lights in a window frame, some spare change tossed into a red bucket, some red sprinkles atop the whip cream on your peppermint white mocha latte.



I suddenly have the urge to clean my apartment.
xo,
Leigh