and it is in these days that blend together - that seem and feel and look painfully too similar, that i've started to learn.
for the first time in my life, ever, i've started to feel a new pull inside of me. something is growing there, something that needs to emerge and that i know will emerge. for the first time in my life, i am experiencing what i believe is a pull towards spirituality - towards acknowledging and putting faith in something deeper than the every day blur.
i don't know if this is a result of unplugging a bit from technology (okay, the HBO show True Blood has been taking up the vast majority of my free time, but in retrospect, my "free time" is roughly 3 hours a day, if that). i don't know if it's the fact that my life feel very monotonous and repetitive, and that as a result, i am learning to find things between the lines. i don't know if it's because i met someone and it was once again, too good to be true. it may be because i am suddenly out of touch with most of my once closest friends, and not by choice (& i am beginning to get tired of waiting, hanging on, wondering, making the phone calls...).
whatever it is, i do feel a big change occurring inside of me. a step towards something. i feel as if i have finally started down a path i've never dared venture - the path of getting to know Myself. Once and for all.
on friday night, i sat beneath tiny bulb lights listening to jazz notes, letting a beautiful boy hold my hand in his. his hands were warm and i noticed how small mine looked in his. i felt magical. he pulled out a small notebook from his pocket and told me to write about the Now. i hastily scribbled something in nearly illegible handwriting about trying to hear what lies between the spaces in each note. i felt silly. at set break, we sat on the trunk of his car and looked for the stars, except there weren't any because it was cloudy, and he began reciting Rilke from memory. (yeah, this one really caught my attention).
we then drove to an overview of a lake. it was midnight. it was just us. us two, side by side, the lake, and the trees, and the night and the star-less sky, and our breath clouds rising into the night. we just stood and stared, and that was probably the moment i realized that in the midst of my day to day sameness, void of visible change or promise of light at the end of the tunnel, i have matured - and i am learning how to live in the moment.
because there was nothing more still and more clear to me in that moment - the stilled ground, the still dark, my breath so evident and so crystal clear. it was as if we were the last people on earth. i was reminded that in the midst of the daily grind, i'm still alive and living and my mind is still flowing.
i needed that reminder.
& what's more, it was so beautiful to experience this stillness with another human being. & he knew it too. we will be forever interconnected in this way, in this sort of silent understanding we both had of each other and the night. we are both locked in this moment in time (& i think it's so sad that we cut ourselves off from one another via various technological means). we are all so close, yet we keep one another at such a distance (i will write more on this later). it was so nice to be.
the days might be blending together, but i know now that i am growing more distinct, more sharply outlined against the future, whatever and wherever it is.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Day of Absurdity
I would like now to write about the absurdity of the other day.
The other day, I arrived at the cafe as always - freshly rolled out of bed, still yawning, matted hair and dirty jeans and my usual I-don't-care-enough face of no makeup, bags under eyes. Upon arrival up the stairs to the room of Promised Chaos and Stress, I found M scurrying around, half the coffee pots empty, espresso all over the floor. I could tell it had been busy, and went to my usual first task of grinding coffee in the basement.
As I stood grinding the coffee - one of my favorite cafe activities, it smells so great! - I noticed C pacing around nearby. And by pacing, I mean pacing with ferocity and carrying a hammer, and literally fuming, suppressing what I think were the beginnings of screams. So, I concluded that yes, he was definitely the epitome of PISSED - bat out of hell pissed.
After a few loud slams and a couple of trays were thrown against a wall, he stormed past me into the office. Door slam.
Glass shatter.
The very frazzled and frightened looking book keeper emerging through the door with shards of glass poking into her shoe soles. Glass all over the floor. I asked her what is going on, exactly? She tells me that their cat, who had recently been lost outdoors and had caused a whole lot of grief and yelling and Utter Chaos the prior week, had now escaped via a tiny hole in the wall.
I see C emerge from the office, and I can tell his wrath is on a whole new scale of anger. He promptly slams his hammer into the wall, and I take that as my cue to go back upstairs to the room of Promised Chaos.
When I get back up there, arms full of coffee containers and my entire front brown with coffee grinds, I am confronted by the Boy Next Door. GREAT.
The Boy Next Door makes my heart leap and significantly decreases my abilities to act like a normally functioning human being. We'll talk about him later, though.
So, Boy is there, my heart catches in my throat and I forget how to speak and function like a human being, and M. asks me "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON DOWN THERE?" and we hear more slams of furniture and/or hammer whacking, and then every customer (aka the entire town of Acton) comes to the counter to inform me that "the window to that cellar outside is broken." "Did you know that there is a broken window outside?" Next person. "HEY THERE IS A BROKEN WINDOW." "OMG DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS A BROKEN WINDOW!"
omg, did you know you all sound like a broken record, and that YES, i witnessed that window breaking.
An hour or two later, the cat is retrieved from the wall. Whew.
Meanwhile, a constant and loud hammering has begun upstairs. Upstairs, there is a cute little apartment that the cafe owners are about to move into. And of course, moving in always mean renovations. Today, the flooring was being redone, and the hammering was loud and quite obnoxious. And of course, when there is any form of a constant sound or unusual occurrence, customers will be more than happy to inform me of the Quite Obvious:
"Did you know there is a hammering noise?" (NO. I'm just deaf/immune to all noises because I am a worker and hence not a human being with hearing abilities).
"What's that hammering? Do you hear that? What do you think that might be?"
"WHAT IS THAT?"
"You know, that hammering has been going on for a while."
Multiply these questions and their various forms by about the entire town of Acton, MA, and you will have the number of times I had to hear and answer this question.
About mid afternoon, M leaves to go about her day, and I am left By Myself. Normally, this is fine with me, but I have an uneasy feeling about the things that will happen next.
And it is with my luck that the second M leaves, what feels like every person in Massachusetts decides to get on board the Cafe train and plow through those front doors, and I am left losing most of my mind in the midst of chicken tarragon orders and lattes and smoothies and cookies and dirty dishes and "order up!" and take out orders and busing tables and refilling coffee pots and brewing iced tea and losing most of my brain in the process.
And it is with my luck on this grand and eventful day that C decides to play with the fuses and thus accidentally shut down my main register. The one with ALL of the money inside. The one that, with no power, I cannot access in any way shape of form.
And suddenly, there is an "order up!!!!!" for obnoxious ice cream (yes, ice cream is obnoxious, more about that later) and I fly to the back to retrieve it. Of course it's actually not QUITE ready, and I have to wait awkwardly for a good thirty seconds. And while I wait awkwardly and customers see me waiting awkwardly and thus wonder what I am doing just standing there and why am I not waiting on then hand and foot, I hear it.
The water.
The Niagara Falls of floods inside of a building.
I hear it pelting the floor, spraying, dripping. And when I enter the room of Promised Chaos, there it all is, exploding happily from the ceiling - WATER. EVERYWHERE. I could have taken a shower right then and there.
I ended up placing a grimy and huge container beneath it and laughing. Customers were of course, mortified and fascinated, and I got to answer yet another wave of informative observations and Quite Obvious questions. "Water just poured from the ceiling." "Did you know that water just came out of the ceiling? What was that? Why was it pouring out?" "Do you know what the big leak was??"
It was the men upstairs. The ones that had been hammering and had thus created the first wave of ridiculous questions and concerns about the overall well-being of the cafe. They had hit a pipe, and not just any pipe - the toilet pipe.
And so, after nearly bathing in toilet water, making people pay with their credit cards or exact cash only, and witnessing a window smash/wall smash/missing cat, I decided that yes, this day was absolutely absurd and that yes, I love the things that are so unpredictable that we can only sit back and laugh at them in the end.
The other day, I arrived at the cafe as always - freshly rolled out of bed, still yawning, matted hair and dirty jeans and my usual I-don't-care-enough face of no makeup, bags under eyes. Upon arrival up the stairs to the room of Promised Chaos and Stress, I found M scurrying around, half the coffee pots empty, espresso all over the floor. I could tell it had been busy, and went to my usual first task of grinding coffee in the basement.
As I stood grinding the coffee - one of my favorite cafe activities, it smells so great! - I noticed C pacing around nearby. And by pacing, I mean pacing with ferocity and carrying a hammer, and literally fuming, suppressing what I think were the beginnings of screams. So, I concluded that yes, he was definitely the epitome of PISSED - bat out of hell pissed.
After a few loud slams and a couple of trays were thrown against a wall, he stormed past me into the office. Door slam.
Glass shatter.
The very frazzled and frightened looking book keeper emerging through the door with shards of glass poking into her shoe soles. Glass all over the floor. I asked her what is going on, exactly? She tells me that their cat, who had recently been lost outdoors and had caused a whole lot of grief and yelling and Utter Chaos the prior week, had now escaped via a tiny hole in the wall.
I see C emerge from the office, and I can tell his wrath is on a whole new scale of anger. He promptly slams his hammer into the wall, and I take that as my cue to go back upstairs to the room of Promised Chaos.
When I get back up there, arms full of coffee containers and my entire front brown with coffee grinds, I am confronted by the Boy Next Door. GREAT.
The Boy Next Door makes my heart leap and significantly decreases my abilities to act like a normally functioning human being. We'll talk about him later, though.
So, Boy is there, my heart catches in my throat and I forget how to speak and function like a human being, and M. asks me "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON DOWN THERE?" and we hear more slams of furniture and/or hammer whacking, and then every customer (aka the entire town of Acton) comes to the counter to inform me that "the window to that cellar outside is broken." "Did you know that there is a broken window outside?" Next person. "HEY THERE IS A BROKEN WINDOW." "OMG DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS A BROKEN WINDOW!"
omg, did you know you all sound like a broken record, and that YES, i witnessed that window breaking.
An hour or two later, the cat is retrieved from the wall. Whew.
Meanwhile, a constant and loud hammering has begun upstairs. Upstairs, there is a cute little apartment that the cafe owners are about to move into. And of course, moving in always mean renovations. Today, the flooring was being redone, and the hammering was loud and quite obnoxious. And of course, when there is any form of a constant sound or unusual occurrence, customers will be more than happy to inform me of the Quite Obvious:
"Did you know there is a hammering noise?" (NO. I'm just deaf/immune to all noises because I am a worker and hence not a human being with hearing abilities).
"What's that hammering? Do you hear that? What do you think that might be?"
"WHAT IS THAT?"
"You know, that hammering has been going on for a while."
Multiply these questions and their various forms by about the entire town of Acton, MA, and you will have the number of times I had to hear and answer this question.
About mid afternoon, M leaves to go about her day, and I am left By Myself. Normally, this is fine with me, but I have an uneasy feeling about the things that will happen next.
And it is with my luck that the second M leaves, what feels like every person in Massachusetts decides to get on board the Cafe train and plow through those front doors, and I am left losing most of my mind in the midst of chicken tarragon orders and lattes and smoothies and cookies and dirty dishes and "order up!" and take out orders and busing tables and refilling coffee pots and brewing iced tea and losing most of my brain in the process.
And it is with my luck on this grand and eventful day that C decides to play with the fuses and thus accidentally shut down my main register. The one with ALL of the money inside. The one that, with no power, I cannot access in any way shape of form.
And suddenly, there is an "order up!!!!!" for obnoxious ice cream (yes, ice cream is obnoxious, more about that later) and I fly to the back to retrieve it. Of course it's actually not QUITE ready, and I have to wait awkwardly for a good thirty seconds. And while I wait awkwardly and customers see me waiting awkwardly and thus wonder what I am doing just standing there and why am I not waiting on then hand and foot, I hear it.
The water.
The Niagara Falls of floods inside of a building.
I hear it pelting the floor, spraying, dripping. And when I enter the room of Promised Chaos, there it all is, exploding happily from the ceiling - WATER. EVERYWHERE. I could have taken a shower right then and there.
I ended up placing a grimy and huge container beneath it and laughing. Customers were of course, mortified and fascinated, and I got to answer yet another wave of informative observations and Quite Obvious questions. "Water just poured from the ceiling." "Did you know that water just came out of the ceiling? What was that? Why was it pouring out?" "Do you know what the big leak was??"
It was the men upstairs. The ones that had been hammering and had thus created the first wave of ridiculous questions and concerns about the overall well-being of the cafe. They had hit a pipe, and not just any pipe - the toilet pipe.
And so, after nearly bathing in toilet water, making people pay with their credit cards or exact cash only, and witnessing a window smash/wall smash/missing cat, I decided that yes, this day was absolutely absurd and that yes, I love the things that are so unpredictable that we can only sit back and laugh at them in the end.
The Back Porch, the people that come and go.
I take my breaks on the back porch.
I've watched the seasons turn over from this porch - I watched early summer turn to late, steamy, fever-like August, and August turn to orange and red, and now I stare at bare trees and shiver. I used to gulp iced coffee & eat cold sandwiches; now it's hot hazelnut coffee and squash soup.
I have a nice view of the parking lot from my spot on the porch. Nothing much happens here, not much to look at. C tends to be below, grilling and talking to himself. Sometimes he'll notice I'm up there on the porch, and he'll talk to me about grilling things properly, or the Crazy People that crawl through this town, or his cats, or that the Wall Street Journal is located in CT, and isn't that something?
I can always hear the clanking of the dishes inside, the hum of the hustle and bustle that I am happily and finally sitting away from. I can see the stone wall of the church next door. Next Door.
Next Door is a beautiful stone church, except it is no longer a church from the glimpses I've caught of its inside. It's been made into a company headquarters of some sort. I like to try and imagine who the customers are that get to work in such a lovely building. Sometimes when I am on my break, I have an urge to tear off my work shirt and walk on in, just to catch a glimpse. I like to imagine the inside is just as beautiful/wondrous as the outside.
I don't know why I am so fascinated with a place. I suppose I have nothing better to do, and after the 10th cappuccino of the day, my mind needs to be elsewhere. And what better place than fantasizing about Next Door?
The grand architects, the well-dressed men in their shiny shoes and pressed shirts, their colognes and perfumes fusing my coffee air, ordering their food, collecting their change and continuing into their days - I often feel like a fly on the wall, watching the entire town of Acton come and go and live their lives. I like to wonder about the things they go off and do after they've gotten their egg sandwiches and their triple espressos. I like to wonder about people, especially the ones I see every day and know so well, yet know nothing about.
I've watched the seasons turn over from this porch - I watched early summer turn to late, steamy, fever-like August, and August turn to orange and red, and now I stare at bare trees and shiver. I used to gulp iced coffee & eat cold sandwiches; now it's hot hazelnut coffee and squash soup.
I have a nice view of the parking lot from my spot on the porch. Nothing much happens here, not much to look at. C tends to be below, grilling and talking to himself. Sometimes he'll notice I'm up there on the porch, and he'll talk to me about grilling things properly, or the Crazy People that crawl through this town, or his cats, or that the Wall Street Journal is located in CT, and isn't that something?
I can always hear the clanking of the dishes inside, the hum of the hustle and bustle that I am happily and finally sitting away from. I can see the stone wall of the church next door. Next Door.
Next Door is a beautiful stone church, except it is no longer a church from the glimpses I've caught of its inside. It's been made into a company headquarters of some sort. I like to try and imagine who the customers are that get to work in such a lovely building. Sometimes when I am on my break, I have an urge to tear off my work shirt and walk on in, just to catch a glimpse. I like to imagine the inside is just as beautiful/wondrous as the outside.
I don't know why I am so fascinated with a place. I suppose I have nothing better to do, and after the 10th cappuccino of the day, my mind needs to be elsewhere. And what better place than fantasizing about Next Door?
The grand architects, the well-dressed men in their shiny shoes and pressed shirts, their colognes and perfumes fusing my coffee air, ordering their food, collecting their change and continuing into their days - I often feel like a fly on the wall, watching the entire town of Acton come and go and live their lives. I like to wonder about the things they go off and do after they've gotten their egg sandwiches and their triple espressos. I like to wonder about people, especially the ones I see every day and know so well, yet know nothing about.
Monday, November 2, 2009
repetition blend, with a shot of Tip advice.
the days blend together.
i work so much that lately, i've started to dream about being at the cafe. i woke up the other night sitting perfectly upright, overturning my covers looking for a woman's salad she'd ordered.
my clock will read 3 a.m. & i'll quickly figure out how many hours i have left to sleep before i have to really be worrying about To Go salads and large iced teas.
i wake up an hour or two later, usually. same ordeal. stress. sometimes, i dream that i am driving to work, and in the distance, a large truck is swerving into my lane. or sometimes, i am driving and look up in time to see the bumper of the car in front of me just 5 feet away, and my car is going 60. i always wake up on impact.
regular customers are in my dreams now, too. anne - the salad & large iced tea lady. she's very nice, and i believe she works next door (many of the customers work Next Door, though I have yet to know what Next Door actually is. I like to imagine they are all architects - they strike me as designers). today, we were out of the salad she normally orders. i felt badly.
lately, i've noticed that people like to order large & extra complicated hot drinks, take two or three sips, & then leave. i don't know if it's pure luxury for them, but i think it's very wasteful, and my arm muscle doesn't enjoy cranking out 8 large soy lattes with shots of chocolate, coconut, and vanilla, half-caff, for just a taste. DRINK UP, PLEASE. or just order a small.
& yet - i know that i was a part of their day. i provided that source of comfort - that sweet little taste, even if it was indirectly. & because of my great perky smiling skills that i have mastered down to a science, i usually can crank a dollar or two out of them.
the science of Getting Tips:
1. the faster you can tell a customer their total, the more chance of a better tip. everyone in america is programmed for instant information & gratification, so tell them their total ASAP. while they are counting out their money, take action. grab that chocolate chip cookie, begin that soy latte. they will look up to see their muffin practically jumping off their plate into their mouths, & they will be thrilled.
2. enunciate. each. word. calmly. no matter what the circumstances.
3. smile. pretend you are delighted to see them and make them believe they are the center of your entire universe, and that you would walk into oncoming traffic for them if it meant obtaining their coffee.
4. small talk. (for me, small talk is actually a result of pure curiosity. because all i ever do is work, and all the people i am ever exposed to aside from my family are customers, i am genuinely trying to get to know someone a bit more. however, this can also be easily faked through smiling, laughing at things that aren't that funny, & noticing your surroundings).
& now, the science of Getting Tips from Men: (p.s., i am sorry, men).
1. smile too much. way too much.
2. laugh at their joke ("joke" - i honestly never know if it's a joke or just a strange commentary. laugh at the method of introduction/moment of interaction) no matter how overly ridiculous, confusing & nonsensical it probably is. (today, i had a man walk up to me and do a three snap with the head side-to-side, "oh no you di-in't" sort of ordeal. he then confessed he had no idea where that came from. i certainly couldn't have told him either. laughing was pretty easy in this case.
3. wear good jeans. & a good shirt if possible. when we got new shirts in august, our tips increased by at least $15 per day. some of us at the cafe believe it's because of our lovely new counters, but M. & I secretly know better.
okay, just kidding, sort of. i am terrible.
but these days - they blend together so much that i get various events from various days mixed up into one. a woman who's sandwich was missing the tomatoes, where is that? oh wait, that was from 2 days ago. sorry sir, we're out of the chicken salad. wait no, that was yesterday. the decaf coffee needs to be ground up for tomorrow - oh wait, that thought was from last week. it's tuesday, not monday, and the broom is missing and the dish room was full to the brim five minutes ago.
dirty dishes. coffee grounds on the trash rims. coffee grounds on my jeans, over & over again. coffee grounds scraping my skin, scraping my dreams, caught deep beneath my fingernails, again & again.
these are my days.
i work so much that lately, i've started to dream about being at the cafe. i woke up the other night sitting perfectly upright, overturning my covers looking for a woman's salad she'd ordered.
my clock will read 3 a.m. & i'll quickly figure out how many hours i have left to sleep before i have to really be worrying about To Go salads and large iced teas.
i wake up an hour or two later, usually. same ordeal. stress. sometimes, i dream that i am driving to work, and in the distance, a large truck is swerving into my lane. or sometimes, i am driving and look up in time to see the bumper of the car in front of me just 5 feet away, and my car is going 60. i always wake up on impact.
regular customers are in my dreams now, too. anne - the salad & large iced tea lady. she's very nice, and i believe she works next door (many of the customers work Next Door, though I have yet to know what Next Door actually is. I like to imagine they are all architects - they strike me as designers). today, we were out of the salad she normally orders. i felt badly.
lately, i've noticed that people like to order large & extra complicated hot drinks, take two or three sips, & then leave. i don't know if it's pure luxury for them, but i think it's very wasteful, and my arm muscle doesn't enjoy cranking out 8 large soy lattes with shots of chocolate, coconut, and vanilla, half-caff, for just a taste. DRINK UP, PLEASE. or just order a small.
& yet - i know that i was a part of their day. i provided that source of comfort - that sweet little taste, even if it was indirectly. & because of my great perky smiling skills that i have mastered down to a science, i usually can crank a dollar or two out of them.
the science of Getting Tips:
1. the faster you can tell a customer their total, the more chance of a better tip. everyone in america is programmed for instant information & gratification, so tell them their total ASAP. while they are counting out their money, take action. grab that chocolate chip cookie, begin that soy latte. they will look up to see their muffin practically jumping off their plate into their mouths, & they will be thrilled.
2. enunciate. each. word. calmly. no matter what the circumstances.
3. smile. pretend you are delighted to see them and make them believe they are the center of your entire universe, and that you would walk into oncoming traffic for them if it meant obtaining their coffee.
4. small talk. (for me, small talk is actually a result of pure curiosity. because all i ever do is work, and all the people i am ever exposed to aside from my family are customers, i am genuinely trying to get to know someone a bit more. however, this can also be easily faked through smiling, laughing at things that aren't that funny, & noticing your surroundings).
& now, the science of Getting Tips from Men: (p.s., i am sorry, men).
1. smile too much. way too much.
2. laugh at their joke ("joke" - i honestly never know if it's a joke or just a strange commentary. laugh at the method of introduction/moment of interaction) no matter how overly ridiculous, confusing & nonsensical it probably is. (today, i had a man walk up to me and do a three snap with the head side-to-side, "oh no you di-in't" sort of ordeal. he then confessed he had no idea where that came from. i certainly couldn't have told him either. laughing was pretty easy in this case.
3. wear good jeans. & a good shirt if possible. when we got new shirts in august, our tips increased by at least $15 per day. some of us at the cafe believe it's because of our lovely new counters, but M. & I secretly know better.
okay, just kidding, sort of. i am terrible.
but these days - they blend together so much that i get various events from various days mixed up into one. a woman who's sandwich was missing the tomatoes, where is that? oh wait, that was from 2 days ago. sorry sir, we're out of the chicken salad. wait no, that was yesterday. the decaf coffee needs to be ground up for tomorrow - oh wait, that thought was from last week. it's tuesday, not monday, and the broom is missing and the dish room was full to the brim five minutes ago.
dirty dishes. coffee grounds on the trash rims. coffee grounds on my jeans, over & over again. coffee grounds scraping my skin, scraping my dreams, caught deep beneath my fingernails, again & again.
these are my days.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
P, cookies, the 3 o'clock coffee men.
i don't know many names, but i do know many faces. many. i know the lines in their foreheads, their jackets, & most importantly, the way each and every one of them takes their coffees & what they like to eat. i know their credit cards, or if they will have exact change, or if they prefer to pay later.
there's p. she's the first one i memorized because she was my first customer. as i clumsily looked through the case for the cookie she wanted on that first day, she told me, "oh darling, don't worry, you'll be great at this. we're all nice here." & she was right, though at the time, i had high doubts.
a small guatemalan in a white mug and a chocolate chip cookie. $3.93. every day. she eats only half the cookie, taking the rest in a white napkin. sometimes she'll come back later in the day to finish the cookie & take her free refill. she has that luxury - she is old, retired, i gather. she likes to talk to me at the counter when it's not busy. she tells me that she used to be "practically anorexic" back when she was younger. "I weighed 90 pounds," she tells me. "can you BELIEVE that?" she is fussy about her weight still, even today, and I always tell her she looks just fine, because she does. she is short, old-lady-like, rounded, but not in a heavy way. she has short dark hair & i can tell she worries a lot. she tells me that she lives alone. once, she came in sweating because she'd just been in a car accident - her fault. i gave her coffee on the house that day, even though i'm not supposed to do that. once, she began to tell me about a trip she'd taken to China, but a whole slew of customers came in, & our conversation was abandoned. I still wonder about that trip. I wonder if she's a world traveler. I wonder what's beneath all those years, what wisdom she has to offer. she tells me that i work too much (i do), & it's nice to have a total stranger worry about me. I wonder why she is alone, and I know she doesn't like it. When it's quiet in the cafe, I often want to just sit down and chat with her, because she is lonely and I can tell, she just wants to talk over a cup of coffee with someone, anyone.
& then there are my afternoon coffee men. three of them, all tall, older. a medium guatemalan, a medium dark, and a large dark. room for cream in all three. $2.07 & $2.28 they always pay with exact change.
they aren't the friendliest of guys. the guatemalan guy is probably the most outgoing and friendly of the three - he's the one with the beard and kinder eyes. the others seem distant, clawed at by life in some way or another. they all work together, i gather, probably in the nearby office i imagine is somewhere in the general vicinity of the cafe, though i have yet to discover where. they don't joke with me like many of the regulars do - they are very serious about their coffees, & i know they notice me as much as they notice the color of the door or the other coffee flavors - irrelevant. they dress casually, and they like to stand outside after they pay, smoking cigarettes and talking. coffee & cigarettes & breaks from the day. occasionally, one will order a chicken parm. sandwich - to go - & he'll sit quietly with his coffee, sitting & staring at his thoughts, i gather.
there's p. she's the first one i memorized because she was my first customer. as i clumsily looked through the case for the cookie she wanted on that first day, she told me, "oh darling, don't worry, you'll be great at this. we're all nice here." & she was right, though at the time, i had high doubts.
a small guatemalan in a white mug and a chocolate chip cookie. $3.93. every day. she eats only half the cookie, taking the rest in a white napkin. sometimes she'll come back later in the day to finish the cookie & take her free refill. she has that luxury - she is old, retired, i gather. she likes to talk to me at the counter when it's not busy. she tells me that she used to be "practically anorexic" back when she was younger. "I weighed 90 pounds," she tells me. "can you BELIEVE that?" she is fussy about her weight still, even today, and I always tell her she looks just fine, because she does. she is short, old-lady-like, rounded, but not in a heavy way. she has short dark hair & i can tell she worries a lot. she tells me that she lives alone. once, she came in sweating because she'd just been in a car accident - her fault. i gave her coffee on the house that day, even though i'm not supposed to do that. once, she began to tell me about a trip she'd taken to China, but a whole slew of customers came in, & our conversation was abandoned. I still wonder about that trip. I wonder if she's a world traveler. I wonder what's beneath all those years, what wisdom she has to offer. she tells me that i work too much (i do), & it's nice to have a total stranger worry about me. I wonder why she is alone, and I know she doesn't like it. When it's quiet in the cafe, I often want to just sit down and chat with her, because she is lonely and I can tell, she just wants to talk over a cup of coffee with someone, anyone.
& then there are my afternoon coffee men. three of them, all tall, older. a medium guatemalan, a medium dark, and a large dark. room for cream in all three. $2.07 & $2.28 they always pay with exact change.
they aren't the friendliest of guys. the guatemalan guy is probably the most outgoing and friendly of the three - he's the one with the beard and kinder eyes. the others seem distant, clawed at by life in some way or another. they all work together, i gather, probably in the nearby office i imagine is somewhere in the general vicinity of the cafe, though i have yet to discover where. they don't joke with me like many of the regulars do - they are very serious about their coffees, & i know they notice me as much as they notice the color of the door or the other coffee flavors - irrelevant. they dress casually, and they like to stand outside after they pay, smoking cigarettes and talking. coffee & cigarettes & breaks from the day. occasionally, one will order a chicken parm. sandwich - to go - & he'll sit quietly with his coffee, sitting & staring at his thoughts, i gather.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
coffee jeans
the coffee has permanently stained my jeans. little coffee finger marks imprint themselves along my back pockets, my knees. my jeans have become my permanent wash-rags - they take what my hands must discard.
when i come home, my jeans smell like the cafe. it's funny how places - their smells - can seep themselves into the threads of our clothing. it's as if the places want to be remembered, and weave themselves into our fabric threads. those moments when we come home from a long journey or a place - say college, a backpacking trip - one whiff from our bags is always enough to relive the journey in its entirety, pleasant or not. my jeans smell of sour milk and long hours, and glimpses into hundreds of lives, & rubber floor mats.
i remember when i used to sweat in the summer heat behind that counter. hauling milks, grinding espresso, the sweeping and stooping - my pores cried with sweat, my shirt would drench & i'd hope nobody noticed. it was always the same thing in the summer - fill the iced coffees, brew fresh tea, & make sure we have plenty of lemons. in the summer, people were laid back & less frequent. in the summer, i was still the New Girl.
& now. i shiver in the morning when i grind the coffees in the basement. that cold, it creeps through my threadbare shirt, and i remember my flannel bed sheets and the days when i'd lie wide awake in my winter bed drinking coffee & reading poems & watching the snow fall silently over ithaca. i miss ithaca. it's in the mornings at the cafe, standing in the cold basement, alone in my coffee filled jeans that i miss it most.
when i come home, my jeans smell like the cafe. it's funny how places - their smells - can seep themselves into the threads of our clothing. it's as if the places want to be remembered, and weave themselves into our fabric threads. those moments when we come home from a long journey or a place - say college, a backpacking trip - one whiff from our bags is always enough to relive the journey in its entirety, pleasant or not. my jeans smell of sour milk and long hours, and glimpses into hundreds of lives, & rubber floor mats.
i remember when i used to sweat in the summer heat behind that counter. hauling milks, grinding espresso, the sweeping and stooping - my pores cried with sweat, my shirt would drench & i'd hope nobody noticed. it was always the same thing in the summer - fill the iced coffees, brew fresh tea, & make sure we have plenty of lemons. in the summer, people were laid back & less frequent. in the summer, i was still the New Girl.
& now. i shiver in the morning when i grind the coffees in the basement. that cold, it creeps through my threadbare shirt, and i remember my flannel bed sheets and the days when i'd lie wide awake in my winter bed drinking coffee & reading poems & watching the snow fall silently over ithaca. i miss ithaca. it's in the mornings at the cafe, standing in the cold basement, alone in my coffee filled jeans that i miss it most.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
cafe mornings.
it's always chilly in the morning. i stick my fingers along the heat vents in my car until they burn - anything to find warmth.
when it's 7:13, i am rounding the corner to get on the Highway. if it's a minute earlier or a minute later than this when I reach this bend in Littleton, I know I'll either be way too early, or five minutes late, haphazardly tossing my purse into the file cabinet, dodging disapproving glances.
when i get on the highway, i can breathe again. the sun is always rising and lately, the trees reach for the blue sky with their fiery leaves. fiery fingers. the warmth from the vents floods through my coat. i fumble through the radio and land a perfect song.
i've dodged the death trap merge onto route 2 hundreds of times now. i know when to slow, when to speed, when to cut someone off, when to honk and yell and flash the bird. i realize now how many profanities emerge from my mouth at that intersection on a daily basis.
& then it's the race against the clock. it's usually 7:43 by now, and i have exactly 17 minutes before i have to be standing, dressed in shirt and hat, smiling and pouring the coffee. i always get in the right lane and take off - route 2 is hilly but straightforward and by now, i could drive it with my eyes closed. praying there are no cops around, i fly with Little Red and we both always secretly know there are no cops. i think i have a sixth sense for cops - i have yet to be pulled over, and i attribute this to pure instinct.
arrival.
i let my hands linger on the vents for a minute or two, answer a few text messages, power down. outside, C is grilling. At 7:30 in the morning. lately, the leaves have littered his grilling area, but it hasn't stopped him. nothing stops C. ever.
i throw my purse in the designated second to last drawer of the old filing cabinet. the basement has turned so cold, now that it's fall, and i shiver as i pull off my long sleeved shirt, trading it for my Work Shirt. I throw on my old baseball cap, glance in the mirror, feel briefly ridiculous & wonder how i landed here. Clock in.
Upstairs, I can hear dishes clinking. Soft voices, murmuring into the morning. The little bell announces the arrival of more customers. The early morning hush is still present, though - I can always feel it as I walk up those rickety orange stairs, in the way the coffee steams from the pots, the machines lightly hiss, the gentleness that still resides in people's voices that is so absent come midday. I watch it every day - the way the cafe slowly opens its arms and eyes.
Coffee beans, esspresso machines.
This is my life right now as I know it, and I am going to write about it.
when it's 7:13, i am rounding the corner to get on the Highway. if it's a minute earlier or a minute later than this when I reach this bend in Littleton, I know I'll either be way too early, or five minutes late, haphazardly tossing my purse into the file cabinet, dodging disapproving glances.
when i get on the highway, i can breathe again. the sun is always rising and lately, the trees reach for the blue sky with their fiery leaves. fiery fingers. the warmth from the vents floods through my coat. i fumble through the radio and land a perfect song.
i've dodged the death trap merge onto route 2 hundreds of times now. i know when to slow, when to speed, when to cut someone off, when to honk and yell and flash the bird. i realize now how many profanities emerge from my mouth at that intersection on a daily basis.
& then it's the race against the clock. it's usually 7:43 by now, and i have exactly 17 minutes before i have to be standing, dressed in shirt and hat, smiling and pouring the coffee. i always get in the right lane and take off - route 2 is hilly but straightforward and by now, i could drive it with my eyes closed. praying there are no cops around, i fly with Little Red and we both always secretly know there are no cops. i think i have a sixth sense for cops - i have yet to be pulled over, and i attribute this to pure instinct.
arrival.
i let my hands linger on the vents for a minute or two, answer a few text messages, power down. outside, C is grilling. At 7:30 in the morning. lately, the leaves have littered his grilling area, but it hasn't stopped him. nothing stops C. ever.
i throw my purse in the designated second to last drawer of the old filing cabinet. the basement has turned so cold, now that it's fall, and i shiver as i pull off my long sleeved shirt, trading it for my Work Shirt. I throw on my old baseball cap, glance in the mirror, feel briefly ridiculous & wonder how i landed here. Clock in.
Upstairs, I can hear dishes clinking. Soft voices, murmuring into the morning. The little bell announces the arrival of more customers. The early morning hush is still present, though - I can always feel it as I walk up those rickety orange stairs, in the way the coffee steams from the pots, the machines lightly hiss, the gentleness that still resides in people's voices that is so absent come midday. I watch it every day - the way the cafe slowly opens its arms and eyes.
Coffee beans, esspresso machines.
This is my life right now as I know it, and I am going to write about it.
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