Today I have a coffee and a bagel. Today I sit here waiting for the words to flow, waiting for the wild trapezoid of inspiration to bowl me over with genius.  Today I wait in vain.  It’s been a year since I have written anything. A year since I have reached into the abyss, and I’m terrified that I will have nothing.  Nothing to grasp, nothing left to wander through and discover.  So I’m writing. Words. All the words.

There is a man sitting across the coffee shop from me with his son.  His baseball cap is angled to the left drooping over one eye, possibly pushed by a carelessly determined hand.  The boy holds his juice cup up, shaking it; hoping for more? He drops it. His dad retrieves it and sets it on the table. They are embracing. The boy, resting against his father’s chest, father’s arm draped around him loosely.  I can’t hear what they are murmuring, but the intimacy of such a simple act is striking in this colony of men having very important conversations.

It is odd how many men sit here around me.  Men in pairs, animated with conversation and coffee. Perhaps it is the early hour? As the day moves on more women arrive, gather their coffee and disburse to individual tables. Are they waiting for someone?  Are they content?  I am one of many sitting singularly.  I am content in my anonymity.

Grieg welcoming morning plays in my earphones, trying to block out the din of voices surrounding me, but failing miserably- I have reclassified it as white noise.  Like the sound of the subway and whistle of air as the cars pull up in a rush in front of you.  There is something exhilarating about that. The race of bodies to get from one place to another. I miss that.  Here is it just a rush of cars. An unending traffic jam that stretches from one freeway to another.

This beautiful city has become so congested and tight.  Every corner is filled- so they build up.  Up and up. The sky is their new canvas. They will hack away at the clouds to create the optimal living space for any urban oasis.  Its fascinating and sad.  I have a love/hate relationship with this city.  I remember it 20 years ago through a 20 something’s eyes- ready to experience anything life could throw at me.  It was dirty and raw- the home of grunge and a wild rebellion of sadness.  The sadness has been digitized and the rebellion tamed by home delivery.

This page seems so long. So daunting for someone with nothing to say.  The coffee shop has filled up- a body at every table.  Chatting, staring at their phones. The solitude on our planet now is deafening. We have bridged the gap of distance. In a day we can be on the other side of the world. In a second we can be talking to someone more than 3k miles away.  The world is a neighborhood now.  And yet we are solitary.  It is a strange existence.  I hope that in time our cultures will collide and a big bang of evolution will defeat the racism and hate that swallows us.

I am listening to Puccini.  I forgot how powerful he is.

The ebb and flow of music, words, memory.