I don’t have a sense of adventure like Ko and Masa, my couch surfing guests who stayed at my house a few days ago. They’re riding their Walmart bikes thru the Chihuahuan Desert in the 100 degree heat, live streaming to their friends in Japan along the way.
While they were here they were doing live telecasts from downtown San Antonio rolling around looking at murals and exploring everything. It’s brilliant, it’s a new media - it’s the Gen X experience. I’m realizing the power of the thing. They’re doing like a traveling reality TV show across the world. I mean their followers include people from their home country Japan but also from other places where they’ve traveled: Canada, Poland, Switzerland, Spain, France, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Greece, Egypt and Malta.
I’m sitting in the cafe writing, pen on paper, later to be transposed into a digital file and uploaded to the rohn report where people can open it and look at it. But it’s similar to their magical bicycle riding instagram circus in that we’re both discovering things and having adventures.
When they run out of money, they go home, work their IT jobs for awhile, see the family, build up some cash reserves and go out traveling again. For me I’m already home, I just have to figure out how to stay here.
Maybe I should do something like that . . . shots of me in the cafe writing . . . from different angles . . . you see the pen moving on the paper, the serious face . . . thinking, working it out . . . oh I’ve got it, a look of recognition emerges . . . shift to a panorama of the street, the park, the gnarly old Oak tree, the coffee trailer.
Then I would broadcast it out to all my peeps and they could vicariously experience writing with me. The awesome challenges and rewards of literature.
Actually, for me, writing in the cafe is one of the pleasures of life and an adventure; discovering stuff I didn’t know before. Knowledge is power.
Like when I was at LA Electronics the other day waiting for them to finish my car and this guy was in there, really upset about his amplifier and he’s arguing with the manager and the manager is going well there’s nothing I can do, the problem’s in your car. And the guy is going no I brought my car in here 3 times and I asked you for the best system you got and you sold me this one so you gotta fix it . . . Finally after going back and forth for awhile like a tennis match, trying to win the point, he gives up and sits down. I guess they had come up with some kind of a tentative agreement.
Anyways he looks at me; I’ve been sitting there peacefully the whole time reading a book and says what are you reading? And I say oh check this out and immediately hand over the book, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ illustrated series that originally was a DC comics. He opens it and looks at it, turns a few pages. They’re filled with supernatural characters and fantastic places. Knowledge is power he says and hands it back.
So that’s it. That can happen writing in the cafe, knowledge and power. And discovering them. Then a dog will show up with a master on it’s leash or a baby in a stroller or an interesting person will walk in and you start talking or petting or making inane sounds, imagining that the baby can understand you. Aga cha bota casinabo hi baby hi widdle baby welcome to the world widdle baby. Yeah it’s strange.
The cafe is very similar to a theatre stage, actually; people enter and exit and in between they say their lines and perform their little part; maybe a ritual of the payment of the credit card. It used to be done with a machine that looked like a compact paper shredder and you would put your card in there and mash it together with great force. Now you just wave your card over a small plastic icon and the ritual is complete. Balance due is balance received and your balance has been adjusted for you.
It’s an ensemble piece; there are other groups on stage, not necessarily connected with each other, doing pretty much their own thing. In this you can observe and marvel at the randomness and cacophony of human society. Once in a while it all comes together, laughter ripples thru the assembled patronage from a good joke and people shift their attention, the baby does something cute and everybody feels like smiling. For a moment everyone is connected, all is one.
I’m sipping my cappuccino, after making my barista joke (something about how big is the universe) and listening to the music (some chanteuse singing ‘when you fall in love’) and looking out at the bright world around me, Bright and bold and quite full of hidden adventures it seems to me. In the cafe you can sense them Or maybe it’s the caffeine.
music :: Professor - Kojo 34:00-36:52
writing in the cafe