Coffee Shop Writing—Dogs!

I am sitting outside a new Sellwood coffee joint, one that dedicates some of its profits to the welfare of shelter dogs. I’ll drink my iced coffee to that!

It’s pushing 90 degrees. The interior of the joint boasts a good vibe with the usual suspects on tablets and phones. Unfortunately, there is no reading material present for a patron to pick up and read. Is reading material ever coming back to coffee joints?

Give this place 200 years and it may vaguely resemble a European street corner in the old part of the city.

I just wrote a letter to a friend in a distant city.

It’s pretty low key around me as I write this. Nevertheless, the pandemic rages on and I canceled my writing workshop that would have taken place today.

Everyone around here is complying with the mask mandate. Elsewhere, morons wave flags and pitchforks. It’s hard to believe that people will die from attending a rock or country music festival. And they weren’t even shot!

This could be a good spot to write this fall and winter if I had anything to write.

People and their dogs pass by me. They are shopping or heading to and from restaurants.

After writing this in my notebook, I have nothing left to do all day except cook dinner for Dad.

I’ll probably finish the Upton Sinclair biography I started reading yesterday. He has to be one of the more peculiar American writers who ever lived. He wrote 90 books! He was a ranked tennis player! He was a socialist! He concocted literary hoaxes and sham controversies to promote his books! He ran for Governor of California!

Earlier this morning, I bicycled through the homeless encampment near the park. It had grown by another RV and another van. Whatever goes on there is beyond my comprehension. Still, I try comprehending. Maybe that’s the whole point of my writing about it. Comprehension = Incomprehension. Maybe that’s the theme of the book about the homeless I am marinating in my mind.

Who says you have to write about something to make sense of it? How about writing on a subject as an act to not understand a damn thing and thereby settling the nerves? What an interesting theory.