There's Got to be a Better Way!
Location: Coffee House.
The woman at my right joins a man next to the cream and sugar. She asks him:
"Do you dress up your coffee? I just have mine black."
The phrase "dress up" in relation to coffee immediately pulls my attention away from my current revision of the short story I'm working on. This is why it's difficult for me to write in public places, I'm constantly interested and usually quite amused with people around me. How they interact (social mannerisms and whatnot), behavior, conversation. I feel like my surroundings are just for my observation, but don't we all feel like we're in the middle of this great movie starring ME? It isn't until I see people glance my way that I remind my self I am not, like I previously thought, invisible.
Dress up the coffee. Does it prefer dinner casual, or maybe cocktail? Perhaps some coffee would rather be suited for a black-tie event.
These are the thoughts that float through my mind until I'm adrift in a world of coffee attire. Or in the woman's case, black, meaning no attire maybe. Her coffee is nude, living in a nudist colony with all the other minimalist coffees.
The man posed with the question "Do you dress up your coffee?" actually seems a little confused. I think for a moment he is trying to impress this woman. Through her so generously offering up her coffee preference he feels the need to state his own, as if he'd never been more sure about anything. He stumbles over his words, "I well um..."
Now he is forced to choose; if he doesn't know what he takes in his coffee, he thinks to himself, maybe he doesn't know himself at all. Where is he going in life, anyways? What have I accomplished? Coffee, black, cream, sugar, artificial sugar, soy milk, almond milk. Are these my choices? He becomes nervous, frozen at this proverbial fork in life. One of those tiny, seemingly unimportant moments where you're meant to gain some introspection. Odd, I think to myself and look away.
There are moments every day which demand you take the camera with which we all view life and turn it on ourselves. Mine came the other day when I saw my roommate folding socks. Somehow they ended up in perfectly proportionate balls after she lined them up symmetrically and folded them over on each other. I never understand this, to me this was something my mother did that I would never have the ability to do. Like making a bed, for example. I grew up with a mother who through some magical force beyond my comprehension would present everything as if it fell out of a Martha Stewart magazine. If at some point between childhood and womanhood there was a secret class where this information was provided, I slept though it.
Moment number two came when my roommate appeared from the kitchen carrying a very sharp knife meant for cutting meat, at least that was its usual purpose. She walked to the couch, grabbed our green pillows and began shaving them, like some old fashioned barber. I was shocked. In my mind, those little balls of fuzz that accumulate on fabric, either sweaters, or elsewhere, are just a part of life. You just "deal with" the fuzz balls. There is no removal of the fuzz balls.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"I'm shaving the pillows," she responds as if were the most natural thing to be doing.
"Oh."
I decide immediately not to make a big deal of this, they are her pillows and her knife. Her hour of life to waste. Shave away my friend.
If this were the end of it I would have most likely discarded the whole event from my mind, that is until some time later...
Sitting on the floor of her bedroom one day I notice a plastic package holding some sort of device. I lean closer and read, Fabric Shaver on the label of the item. It appears a bit like an electric shaver, but apparently someone has created this especially for fabric. Again, I'm shocked. My roommate shaving the pillow is one thing, but the entire idea of shaving your fabric has now been commercialized and I find myself of the fringe of some great community where an electric fabric shaver is a necccesity. I see a woman in her living room, the scene in black and white, she's shaving vigorously with a knife and then looks at the camera, "There's go to be a better way!"
Enter the "Fabric Shaver."
I'll probably never be the kind of gal who owns a fabric shaver, and it would even be a stretch to say I'll ever own one of those squeegees you use to clean your shower door.
But what do you do when your problem doesn't have an easy "Call now and get another one free!" solution.
What if you're trying to do the right things (get a job, finish school, keep the appointments you make and usually miss) but things somehow end up with irremovable "fuzz balls?" No quick fix when everyone around you seems to have it together, but you're spinning out of control.
I can't help but feel the urge to throw my books down in the middle of campus, fall on my knees in the most melodramatic fashion and scream at the heavens, "There's got to be a better way!"
The woman at my right joins a man next to the cream and sugar. She asks him:
"Do you dress up your coffee? I just have mine black."
The phrase "dress up" in relation to coffee immediately pulls my attention away from my current revision of the short story I'm working on. This is why it's difficult for me to write in public places, I'm constantly interested and usually quite amused with people around me. How they interact (social mannerisms and whatnot), behavior, conversation. I feel like my surroundings are just for my observation, but don't we all feel like we're in the middle of this great movie starring ME? It isn't until I see people glance my way that I remind my self I am not, like I previously thought, invisible.
Dress up the coffee. Does it prefer dinner casual, or maybe cocktail? Perhaps some coffee would rather be suited for a black-tie event.
These are the thoughts that float through my mind until I'm adrift in a world of coffee attire. Or in the woman's case, black, meaning no attire maybe. Her coffee is nude, living in a nudist colony with all the other minimalist coffees.
The man posed with the question "Do you dress up your coffee?" actually seems a little confused. I think for a moment he is trying to impress this woman. Through her so generously offering up her coffee preference he feels the need to state his own, as if he'd never been more sure about anything. He stumbles over his words, "I well um..."
Now he is forced to choose; if he doesn't know what he takes in his coffee, he thinks to himself, maybe he doesn't know himself at all. Where is he going in life, anyways? What have I accomplished? Coffee, black, cream, sugar, artificial sugar, soy milk, almond milk. Are these my choices? He becomes nervous, frozen at this proverbial fork in life. One of those tiny, seemingly unimportant moments where you're meant to gain some introspection. Odd, I think to myself and look away.
There are moments every day which demand you take the camera with which we all view life and turn it on ourselves. Mine came the other day when I saw my roommate folding socks. Somehow they ended up in perfectly proportionate balls after she lined them up symmetrically and folded them over on each other. I never understand this, to me this was something my mother did that I would never have the ability to do. Like making a bed, for example. I grew up with a mother who through some magical force beyond my comprehension would present everything as if it fell out of a Martha Stewart magazine. If at some point between childhood and womanhood there was a secret class where this information was provided, I slept though it.
Moment number two came when my roommate appeared from the kitchen carrying a very sharp knife meant for cutting meat, at least that was its usual purpose. She walked to the couch, grabbed our green pillows and began shaving them, like some old fashioned barber. I was shocked. In my mind, those little balls of fuzz that accumulate on fabric, either sweaters, or elsewhere, are just a part of life. You just "deal with" the fuzz balls. There is no removal of the fuzz balls.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"I'm shaving the pillows," she responds as if were the most natural thing to be doing.
"Oh."
I decide immediately not to make a big deal of this, they are her pillows and her knife. Her hour of life to waste. Shave away my friend.
If this were the end of it I would have most likely discarded the whole event from my mind, that is until some time later...
Sitting on the floor of her bedroom one day I notice a plastic package holding some sort of device. I lean closer and read, Fabric Shaver on the label of the item. It appears a bit like an electric shaver, but apparently someone has created this especially for fabric. Again, I'm shocked. My roommate shaving the pillow is one thing, but the entire idea of shaving your fabric has now been commercialized and I find myself of the fringe of some great community where an electric fabric shaver is a necccesity. I see a woman in her living room, the scene in black and white, she's shaving vigorously with a knife and then looks at the camera, "There's go to be a better way!"
Enter the "Fabric Shaver."
I'll probably never be the kind of gal who owns a fabric shaver, and it would even be a stretch to say I'll ever own one of those squeegees you use to clean your shower door.
But what do you do when your problem doesn't have an easy "Call now and get another one free!" solution.
What if you're trying to do the right things (get a job, finish school, keep the appointments you make and usually miss) but things somehow end up with irremovable "fuzz balls?" No quick fix when everyone around you seems to have it together, but you're spinning out of control.
I can't help but feel the urge to throw my books down in the middle of campus, fall on my knees in the most melodramatic fashion and scream at the heavens, "There's got to be a better way!"