A Big City Story

I drink a $3 iced tea. I sit at a table near the counter.

“Rubberband Man” by the Spinners plays. I danced to that song at junior high dances and danced to it badly.

I think about the flotilla of dilapidated boats roped together on the Willamette River, near Ross Island. A ramshackle navy of homeless men, women, dogs and cats. There is a quirky dystopia unfolding in the city. Tepees and boats and the dispossessed with smart phones. Beavers and herons looking on.

A photography zine for sale–$10.

An ad for custom-made chain mail catches my eye. People wear chain mail in the city?

Tepid art for sale on the walls.

Everyone clad in black, using an Apple product. One kid is wearing a cravat.

A small dog on a candy cane-striped leash enters and sniffs around me. I feel for the dog. He’s an accessory, nothing else.

I long to live in a rock hut with an ocean view in a climate where Apple products rust and fail.

I like reading the writing of dead unpublished writers and knowing that I will have a hand in publishing them. I wonder if anyone will come along after I’m dead and publish some of my unpublished writing. I better add a codicil to the will to ensure that.

I want to start a business that investigates and assesses the writings of dead writers and makes publishing recommendations to their families. I am going to start that business. I’ll need a logo.

The word defenestration has floated through my mind in recent weeks. It’s one of those words that doesn’t sound like what it means.

I think of all the thousands and thousands of hours I spent in cafes all over the world in my 20s and early 30s, where I tried to write stories and novels, and the writing never transpired. It finally happened when I started writing in dive taverns along the Oregon Coast. Why?

I dread the next two hours.

“A Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone plays. I remember dancing with someone in my house to this song. There was later a visit to the beach at dusk and a gray sky so congealed that I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

I stashed four of my books in the cafe’s bookshelf. Let them loose to the city winds and the city minds.

The barista complimented me on my corduroy jacket, made in Yugoslavia by communists and purchased for 99 cents at an animal shelter thrift store.

I meet later with an old friend. I don’t think this friend is all that enthused about the prospect of meeting me. I sense meeting me has become an obligation for some people. (The friend never showed up, texted or called.)

I learned a new word from a dead writer’s unpublished novel—sibilant. I like it. The “sibilant ocean” is how he used it. The ocean hissing.

Automobile fumes fill the cafe.

I am writing this in longhand in a notebook. I am the only person writing that way.

I forgot to bring my Perry Mason novel with me. I’m on my third straight. They are vastly different than the television show. I like the Perry in the show better. More reserved. Classier. Is it possible to look classy using an Apple product in a cafe?

Let me look around…

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