The City, a Story Again

The cafe again. The counter. The view up the street. Rain wants to fall.

A woman talks loudly on her phone to a client, a catering client. She’s talking wine and cakes.

I bought a hat for a dog today. I bought a biography about Patty Hearst.

Coffee went up in here again. Yuban seems to keep costing less.

A man walks down the sidewalk carrying two empty growlers.

Work is coming my way. Good work. The key to good work seems to be found in face-to-face encounters. I seek them out. Some people are afraid of these possible encounters with me because they might have to consider, reconsider. Reconsidering is very hard for people anymore in an era of instant judgment and determination.

I saw a tepee near the Hawthorne Bridge. It had rough-hewed poles of alder. Someone harvested them near the river. Someone hauled them up from the river. I suppose it makes the city a more interesting place of ecology if there are still alders around for people to harvest for use in making shelter. One suspects, however, that beavers near the river aren’t happy. They have competition.

My mind drifts to the future. Where will I live? What will I see? What are the faces in the new place?

Fatigue creeps in.

A friend told me she is going to apprentice as a cobbler. She’s sick of computers and the sterility of their sterile tactile nature. She wants to use her hands and use an awl.

I’m creating a new job for myself: literary executor for the estate of dead unpublished writers. I read the writing from the dead and make recommendations on its disposition. I love this job. Give me more unpublished writing from the dead. There is unique life in this work. It’s totally unlike reading a published book from a dead writer. They got it out, somehow. Perhaps I will help this dead writer’s dreams of being published come alive.

The coffee tastes especially bitter.

Why is there a potted cactus in the window? In Western Oregon?

I made a crying woman laugh yesterday in a place of utter American misery. I didn’t even know her, but I saw her face and I reacted with my face and asked: “Are you okay? Can I help?”

She said “no” and “no” and then I said something and made her laugh.

I meet another friend later, in another part of the city. I would like to make her laugh.

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