Coffee With The Man From The Future.
I’m not very good at beginnings. I think its because everything is a beginning and trying to differentiate the important ones from the ones I should let get away is something I find very difficult. I’m a hoarder. A hoarder of experiences. Nothing hurts me more than wondering what could have been. So, everything is a beginning and that makes me equally excited about every little thing that happens to me, which gives me very little space to remember, exactly, which one of those things is actually a beginning. I was at a coffee shop.
This isn’t unusual for me. I fancy myself a writer, and mostly I enjoy a good cup of coffee. And reading. Maybe my first trip to Europe stayed with me. I find time stacks in a coffee shop. It’s a neat little trick; cradling the warm ceramic with my eyes closed and getting whisked away to every single moment I’ve done this same exact thing in Europe. Africa. North America. South America. Then it gets more specific. Open file, Europe. Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona. Pause. I make it a point to do this wherever I want to plant a memory. Save progress. Drink coffee. Proceed. Open file, Amsterdam. The first time, with my best friend. The next time, just me. The next time, with new friends. The time after, I made friends. The next one, for a boy. The one after, with a boy. The quick stop, with my grandfather. The return home, alone. Which one, which one, my mind is rifling. Open file, The Next Time, With New Friends. Cute little spot called Pluk. Goat cheese and sweet potato on rye. Laptops open, both of us writing. We actually met in Colombia. Pause. Open New File, Colombia. Cartagena. Coffee Club and playing Head’s Up in the hotel lobby. Pause. Exit. See what I mean? One warm mug and I can dive into a thousand memories. Maybe more. I’m older now. It’s a neat little trick. I was at a coffee shop.
The coffee wasn’t for memories though. I was trying to explain to myself and my imaginary audience why, precisely, I needed to listen to Money For Nothing on repeat to draft that particular story I needed to release. A story about a chair from every year of my life. All lined up in an empty room. Waiting. It came to me in a dream. I could call it a dream, but I know it was a Waiting Room. I know myself, and I know I hate anything to do with waiting. I have to be in dire straits to be waiting. It’s a bad joke, but it isn’t a joke. Not really. It’s the reason I needed to listen to the song seventy-seven times over, and then seventy-three times again. Because my brain made the connection between my distress signal, a very particular guitar riff, and the name of the band just happened to explain the very specific emotional key of the story. So, the song gets me hyped up on that very specific wavelength. Psychic wavelength. Oh, and just think of the interview potential. The tidbit. The soundbite. Pan to Cannes. She wrote this with Dire Straits on repeat. What song? Money For Nothing. Why? It was inspiring. Wow. That story isn’t important though. Not to this one. It is merely a beginning. With no real leaning.
Details are not always for me. I find them positively annoying on a good day. Not because they don’t matter. Of course they do. But they don’t really matter to me. I am not a detail being. Details bind me to reality. I do not want to be bound to reality. I want to be, at least seventy-five percent of the time, dreaming. I can describe things, sure. I can say I’m wearing combat boots and leather cargo pants. I can say my grey sweater is tucked into the front of my bra as per the current social media hack trend. I can say I’m wearing purple lipstick and my hair is growing out at the roots. But then I’m just a person. Because I’m describing a person. And I am not a person. I am seventy billion ideas wrapped in a human skin. Just a ballpark figure. It never stays the same. Ideas aren’t like shoes. You don’t put one on and leave it at that. They don’t complement an outfit and keep your toes safe from the Toronto goop. The flitter and flutter and refract off each other. By the time you’ve caught one, it’s multiplied and cascaded into a million more and all the shoes on the planet wouldn’t be able to hold them anyway so it’s really not important to be worrying about those kinds of details.
And that is why, with no particular details, a man came to be sitting at my table, claiming to be from the future.
