Poor Starbucks. They have not had my requisite tea (English Breakfast) for several days now. This is a major problem and has upset my equilibrium in serious fashion. Without my tea, I am dizzy, in a tizzy. I don’t know who I am anymore. The muse? (such as he/she is) has taken a break, a coffee break. The modern, younger inspirations are different than the classical variety. Being less committed to work and more committed to family and fulfillment, they just sit down from time to time. All of earth has shifted. It is seismic in all quarters. Dwight David Eisenhower is turning in the grave. Any change is a strange thing but the ones some of us are are trying to sleep through? hahahah.
On slow, tea-less days like today, I don’t feel the song. I know it is there but I can’t remember how to hear it. The radio plays but it is a hollow sound and only vaguely like music. Usually, there is great change afoot in that situation. In days past, a dull and quiet space like this one has led me to some other facet of writing, living. Is it a presently illumined former shadow I am noticing? Maybe I am seeing the tip of something breaking through dusk? While I wait to see what awaits at my new plateau, I shall describe the current obvious scene…
I heard the sounds of murder happening. There was a loud slap, then a shout went up from semi-circle gathered baristas celebrating one young woman’s successful fly kill. Cheers! Congratulations! At that point, I noticed the Abell Pest Control official who was crouching beneath the counter. What is it he is trying to kill? These few brief actions are adding an edge of dis-ease to my dining and drinking experience. It is totally dull and partly quiet here, otherwise. Industrial strength air conditioning is rolling away at full tilt, pouring exhausted heat out into an otherwise cool day. Pop music is gently pushing away at the loudspeakers. It’s a vintage pop from the sounds I can hear but not a known era to me, I cannot hear the lyrics or much of the chord accompaniment. The music is mostly acoustic blur. This troubles me further, regarding the missing muse. Vocal song is tactile for me, to fully hear it I have to feel it with my understanding. I am a blind man, white cane tapping in search when I cannot hear the core of a thing. If I can’t follow a lyric, the muse is absent. I am lost.
As if to find where I am, I cast a glance around the ‘dining room’. A man who earlier in the week introduced himself as Peter is sitting to my right. He is engrossed in his work (Some mystical sort of financial service which he tried to start selling me on when we met. I am not interested and he quickly gave up his pitch. Perhaps my ragged look warned him not to bother). He has a wide-eyed but squinted sort of countenance as if intensely solving a problem of historical dimensions. “Just how do we get the money laundered and through our Swiss numbered account without the Canadian authorities discovering what we are about? Hmmmmm.” Maybe, he is in touch with Bill Morneau. He seems an honest enough fellow but has an interesting story I would like to pursue some day. He tells me that he is currently living on a friend’s large boat, parked at the marina. His living arrangement has something to do with Covid restrictions but I am unclear why. When I am not so busy doing nothing, I will inquire further.
To my left is a young woman/man. I cannot really tell which without a serious, piercing and analytic stare. I am sure she would notice an old guy like me, trying to solve the mystery. My gut feeling is that she is a she. The wide shoulders and unusual height give me pause, though. Is she or isn’t she? Her brusque, purposeful movements and lip crunching intensity as she grips her pencil add up to Man In Drag. The unfeminine, spread legged, forward leaning stance makes me wonder as well. When I am not so busy doing nothing, I will inquire further.
I am busy just now. I am very occupied doing nothing of measurable value. I am typing and typing and drinking tea and finishing a bagel as if the U.S. president were a kind and wise man who had empathy for the rest of the planet. I am typing and typing and living as if there were no need for presidents or government or muses anymore. I am typing and typing as if that would finish a book and as if finished books mattered a whit. I am typing and typing but mostly because it is a thing I learned to do and it makes my arthritis feel a bit better. Hah.
Robert On The Air 