The purpose of this blog is to help me keep up with the writing and sometimes to keep friends and long-distance relatives up-to-date on what is going on in my life... Mostly, I just want to get my talent for writing back. It's in here somewhere. It used to come so easily, then I stopped, and now it's difficult for me to write stories the way I used to.
So this weekend I was alone here at my home and thought I'd take the time to live how I used to, if I wasn't feeling to sick. Back in the day, on night's when I wasn't feeling sick, I did my homework (mostly writing) at my (former) favorite coffee shop downtown. They haven't done anything to bump themselves a notch from the favorite position. I've just gone to more coffee shops since those days and enjoy the others more. Anyway, so I thought I'd get all cozied up in a spot there, put pen to paper, 'cause I am NOT a computer writer.... everything always starts with a pen or pencil and eventually ends up on the computer... and see what masterpiece happened that I could edit and eventually send to someone.
So I went to the coffee shop. I ordered a latte and some baked good and found the best spot that I could. Unfortunately, the couches and plush chairs were taken. Those are my favorite spots, but you have to work with what's there. And what was there was a tiny table in the middle of the room. I sat my pink purse and my "creative bag" (read: black bag with the Beatles "Abbey Road" photo in silver on the side) on one chair and sat down in the other chair with my tasty coffee and chocolatey baked good in front of me. Around me, every other person, except for two ladies who were visiting, had an Apple laptop in front of them. No joke. But I still confidently pulled my notebook and pen out of my bag. We artists all have our way of doing our work, yes?
And mine began with being distracted by my coffee and the chocolatey goodness of the baked good. I could only write one terrible sentence before the baked thingy was gone. When that was finally out of my way, I slowly wrote another sentence, but I was distracted because the ladies who were chatting were speaking an Oriental language and it was so beautiful to listen to them say something I couldn't understand in such animated ways and laugh. I would wonder if they were talking about travel, school, boys, work, kids? But I tried to at least look like I was thinking about my writing. Then I actually did think about my writing and wrote a third sentence, but to write something well, I need to be very emotionally involved, and it's so hard for me to do that when I'm distracted by conversation and just as those women left, the man at the table that was practically connected to mine was joined by another man. So as I tried to talk myself into focusing to see if my sentences even made any sense, if they drew any emotion out at all, it turned out that these men spoke what appeared to be Spanish, but could have been Portuguese. Probably Spanish. They had an animated conversation and after a while, words like muchacha and bonita were being thrown about as I noticed they were looking at me, but trying to act like they weren't.
By then, my masterpiece wasn't going to happen. I couldn't stop eavesdropping on conversations that I couldn't understand and eventually getting paranoid that these foreign languages, as beautiful as they both sounded, were all about me.
So I got four sentences of a poem done, then started writing a letter before I finished my coffee.
Me with my striped notebook, surrounded by people with their wireless internet accessible laptops. Am I the only one under 40 who is attached to notebooks?
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