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I'm a proponent of finding odd nooks to read and write. Reading or writing in a coffee shop no longer exudes an air of a bohemian existence. I think the moment you couldn't enter a room ripe with cigarette smoke and the aroma of strong Arabian coffee things began to change.
Now the room is usually clean, sweets stay on shelves behind glass until the time a patron requests a "scone". Most of the bathrooms lack any worthwhile reading material. Instead of provocative graffiti small notices inquire if you are the victim of domestic abuse.
Yet, if you avoid the sterile everything looks the same coffeehouse, some places still exist that lure patrons, promising coffee along with a chance to rub elbows with other determined writers, or readers who underline and write marginalia.
Today after ordering an iced decaf, no sweetener, no room, I looked around the coffee house and knew that, for me, the setting didn't inspire the beginning of a novel, or the telling of my life in a 250 page memoir.
So instead of joining the three women knitting and drinking lattes, I went outside and sat in my car. I conjured up bearded men bent over a wood table and writing in longhand; I visualized someone sketching on napkins; I listened to four people discussing whether narrative was dead or dying or if not it why it should die.
I added my opinion and wondered if I should write a book with one long sentence, no punctuation, one character who morphs into other characters when necessary, devoid of a narrative thread, time traveling and world weary.
Should I succumb to the avant guard, or load up my pen with ink and write one long narrative while seated in Starbucks.
Perhaps I can be content recalling the coffee house I once frequented in Greenwich Village where we delved into nihilism, literary theory, and sweet sticky baklava.
.
Now the room is usually clean, sweets stay on shelves behind glass until the time a patron requests a "scone". Most of the bathrooms lack any worthwhile reading material. Instead of provocative graffiti small notices inquire if you are the victim of domestic abuse.
Yet, if you avoid the sterile everything looks the same coffeehouse, some places still exist that lure patrons, promising coffee along with a chance to rub elbows with other determined writers, or readers who underline and write marginalia.
Today after ordering an iced decaf, no sweetener, no room, I looked around the coffee house and knew that, for me, the setting didn't inspire the beginning of a novel, or the telling of my life in a 250 page memoir.
So instead of joining the three women knitting and drinking lattes, I went outside and sat in my car. I conjured up bearded men bent over a wood table and writing in longhand; I visualized someone sketching on napkins; I listened to four people discussing whether narrative was dead or dying or if not it why it should die.
I added my opinion and wondered if I should write a book with one long sentence, no punctuation, one character who morphs into other characters when necessary, devoid of a narrative thread, time traveling and world weary.
Should I succumb to the avant guard, or load up my pen with ink and write one long narrative while seated in Starbucks.
Perhaps I can be content recalling the coffee house I once frequented in Greenwich Village where we delved into nihilism, literary theory, and sweet sticky baklava.
.
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