Dear Glistering Suncore
Dear Glistering Suncore,
The breeze outside is cool like it is on those evenings in October when it is neither summer or autumn, except the sun is out and Easter is in two days and the world is coming alive again, this time. I am sitting barefoot on a couch in Columbus's only free-standing Starbucks. I'm not a coffee drinker. I don't know why I came here.
Going around the room:
To my left is a couple of women; both sixty or sixty-two years old, if I had to guess. They are holding new copies of Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding and are discussing what they have termed its 'terrible realism.' I think they're waiting for the rest of the book club. One of them is shaking her left hand to emphasize her perpetual frustration with Frankie (the protagonist, I suppose). The other woman is only a silhouette from where I sit, but I see her raise her head in agreement and now they are laughing. Looks like a shared frustration. It's funny how you can't learn people's names by eavesdropping on conversation.
In front of me is a short fellow, about thirty-two I'd say, slumping in a blue upholstered chair. Legs crossed at the ankles, arms lumped in lap, he has fallen asleep over a copy of Patriot Games. Rightly so. The coffee to his right (decaf?) has a couple of ounces left, and I can tell that it has gone cold.
Behind this fellow is a taller man who looks to be in his forties. He sits on the edge of his hard-backed wooden chair, looking left and right and sometimes behind. He is wearing a red plastic poncho even though it is bright out, even though this is the kind of afternoon when it is conceivable for siblings to have such a tolerable time playing outside that they begin to imagine how the rest of life can work out well, even with brothers and sisters in it.
In the time it took me to write the preceeding sentence, the man has gone.
On my right a couple in their fifties talks about the Schiavo case over coffee and pastries. The husband is confident that she should not die. My bias says his certainty comes from some place Biblical, but he hasn't said anything to support that. The wife echoes his opinion and goes one further, suggesting the courts are stalling so that she'll die before any ruling. He agrees. Somewhere out there, maybe in a Starbucks made of anti-matter, two people are agreeing with each other that Schiavo should definitely die. The danger isn't in the opinion so much as the certainty.
A mother and daugher have just entered. The daughter's copy of The Member of the Wedding is used, I can tell from the ragged paperback spine. The mother waves at the earlybirds and greets them from across the room just as they call out her name. Their timing is close enough to keep anyone here from learning just who is Caroline, Jenny, Meredith, Jane. When the newcomers sit, talk shifts to how the daughter has grown; she smiles. I figure she must have read the book in high school a few years before. Her mother's copy is new.
I am trying to imagine a Columbus in which Carson McCullers is not a revered, if minor, figure. I am trying to remember when our library did not carry ten copies of The Member of the Wedding, five of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and two of Ballad of the Sad Café, or when I last saw anyone reading that book outside of AP English.
One historian has hypothesized that only 29 years in human history have gone by without any war anywhere. I am trying to imagine how one day out of those 29 years would have been any different from one day today, provided you are living in the right place. I am trying to reconcile famine and subsistence--F and S, if you will--with the concept of used bookstores, coffeeshops and beautiful Thursday afternoons when birds sing in response to my whistling, with my feeling of Columbus. I am trying to imagine how things could have been different so I can see how they are.
I am trying to convince you that even you do not know what is.
Sincerely,
AP Saulters
The breeze outside is cool like it is on those evenings in October when it is neither summer or autumn, except the sun is out and Easter is in two days and the world is coming alive again, this time. I am sitting barefoot on a couch in Columbus's only free-standing Starbucks. I'm not a coffee drinker. I don't know why I came here.
Going around the room:
To my left is a couple of women; both sixty or sixty-two years old, if I had to guess. They are holding new copies of Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding and are discussing what they have termed its 'terrible realism.' I think they're waiting for the rest of the book club. One of them is shaking her left hand to emphasize her perpetual frustration with Frankie (the protagonist, I suppose). The other woman is only a silhouette from where I sit, but I see her raise her head in agreement and now they are laughing. Looks like a shared frustration. It's funny how you can't learn people's names by eavesdropping on conversation.
In front of me is a short fellow, about thirty-two I'd say, slumping in a blue upholstered chair. Legs crossed at the ankles, arms lumped in lap, he has fallen asleep over a copy of Patriot Games. Rightly so. The coffee to his right (decaf?) has a couple of ounces left, and I can tell that it has gone cold.
Behind this fellow is a taller man who looks to be in his forties. He sits on the edge of his hard-backed wooden chair, looking left and right and sometimes behind. He is wearing a red plastic poncho even though it is bright out, even though this is the kind of afternoon when it is conceivable for siblings to have such a tolerable time playing outside that they begin to imagine how the rest of life can work out well, even with brothers and sisters in it.
In the time it took me to write the preceeding sentence, the man has gone.
On my right a couple in their fifties talks about the Schiavo case over coffee and pastries. The husband is confident that she should not die. My bias says his certainty comes from some place Biblical, but he hasn't said anything to support that. The wife echoes his opinion and goes one further, suggesting the courts are stalling so that she'll die before any ruling. He agrees. Somewhere out there, maybe in a Starbucks made of anti-matter, two people are agreeing with each other that Schiavo should definitely die. The danger isn't in the opinion so much as the certainty.
A mother and daugher have just entered. The daughter's copy of The Member of the Wedding is used, I can tell from the ragged paperback spine. The mother waves at the earlybirds and greets them from across the room just as they call out her name. Their timing is close enough to keep anyone here from learning just who is Caroline, Jenny, Meredith, Jane. When the newcomers sit, talk shifts to how the daughter has grown; she smiles. I figure she must have read the book in high school a few years before. Her mother's copy is new.
I am trying to imagine a Columbus in which Carson McCullers is not a revered, if minor, figure. I am trying to remember when our library did not carry ten copies of The Member of the Wedding, five of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and two of Ballad of the Sad Café, or when I last saw anyone reading that book outside of AP English.
One historian has hypothesized that only 29 years in human history have gone by without any war anywhere. I am trying to imagine how one day out of those 29 years would have been any different from one day today, provided you are living in the right place. I am trying to reconcile famine and subsistence--F and S, if you will--with the concept of used bookstores, coffeeshops and beautiful Thursday afternoons when birds sing in response to my whistling, with my feeling of Columbus. I am trying to imagine how things could have been different so I can see how they are.
I am trying to convince you that even you do not know what is.
Sincerely,
AP Saulters