Pen and Paper

Short work day meant I could get some writing done. I was floored, however, to discover that Think Coffee on the Bowery has no wifi. I just needed a little to open Gmail do I could get on a Google doc, with which one can work offline. But no.

Luckily, I had a pen and notebook in my bag. Hurrah for pens and notebooks.

I worked on new fiction--a new short story. Not inspired by the Kate Atkinson novel I'm reading.

Later, I worked on old fiction--the novella. If it's any good, I don't know about it.

Where I wrote--indecipherably

Dirty hair alley selfie on the way to some sad novella writing

Bicycle Wheel

 Tired of the daily slog of this blog.

But loving having contact with Lara. 

I wish Lara had been with me today when I had this roasted vegetable quinoa salad, although I had just put my fork in when I had to run out for a kid-related issue.

Later, I went out for exactly 30 minutes to see my friend's boyfriend play in this ambient chaos ensemble.  Yes, that is a bicycle wheel.

Which reminds me:  

I've been listening to Culture Shock 1913, a local NPR broadcast--which you can listen to if you click --on the impact of early modernism:  the riot at the Rites of Spring, how uncomfortable Freud made everyone with his sexy talk, what a scandal Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase caused, among many other things.  Two questions:  How would have I reacted to it all?   Would I have been living in New York?--Maybe in Greenwich Village, which was at the time scandalously bohemian.  I like to think so.  And I think about the fact that my grandma was alive in 1913 and four years old. 

Can this kind of scandal be something I can recreate in my own tiny way?  Like in my art?

Lara, is that dumb?  Is anything artistically scandalous anymore?

Clean, Well-Lighted Places

I was very happy to see that my bike shop finally got their adjacent coffee shop open.  From the outside, it looks like a spacious, low key place where I can write and grade.  I didn't have time to lock up and go in, but I'll let you know.

I look forward to little openings in my city, new spaces--clean, well-lighted places where a girl can sit among her fellow humans and maybe channel something worth putting on the page.

Something to look forward to and meditate on in the face of a possible bad outcome in the presidential election AND a possible "perfect storm" that may be hitting my city.

Observing Strangers with The Stranger

I love these vintage Vintage covers.

In weeding and reorganizing all of my books recently, I came across this vintage copy of The Stranger, which I've been carting around since graduate school and never read.  Now I know I should have read it years ago whilst an undergraduate at BYU, a forbidden cup of black coffee cooling in front of me at Bob's Big Boy, but that didn't happen.

So I'm reading it now while I sat in a local dessert cafe and overheard a class on chocolate souffles being taught by the resident pastry chef.  It was a small class of three as you can see, and so I was able to observe--for free!--the manner in which the chef beat the egg whites and hear him discuss egg protein and meringue, and the fact that the chocolate used was 72% cacao and then jealously watch them all eat it. 

I'm liking the book, which opens with the narrator impassively taking part in the small events leading up to his mother's funeral and then his mother's funeral.  I don't know.  Already, I can see that I might be a little old for it. 

The dude on the left just finished his MBA at Cornell and is headed to silicon valley.  I overheard pretty much everything.

A Life Wasted in Cafes: My Rapid Review of Ostcafe in the East Village

I spend most of my time away from work and home in cafes, since I discovered them in the mid-'80s.  I get the most work done in them.  They are my second living rooms (since I've never in my life lived in a space with a big living room).  They are the sites of my highest levels of productivity.  I know that's the worst sentence ever, but it's true!   I've always chosen places to live for their proximity to cafes.  In other words, I have to be able to walk to one.  Even when I lived in Utah, this was a central criterion for signing a lease.  Just sayin', it is one of the weird and potentially difficult things about me, but also one of the potentially fun things, too!

This photo was taken at Ostcafe on Monday:

Ost Pros:

Coffee:  Black Cat. I always order the green tea, which comes in a generous cup with saucer.
Look and feel:  Great ambience, a wall of windows and super high ceilings.
Outlets:  Plenty
Internet:  One hour log-in with purchase.  Good for getting non-internet work done.
Seating:  Ample and cute!
Friends:  Always saying hello to someone.  Has a real neighborhood feel.
Bathroom:  Good!
Fashion and legwear:  Often fun!

Ost Cons:

Internet:  The one-hour log-in can feel quite prohibitive for getting internet-based work done.
Eats:  Nothing baked on the premise and nothing to eat during the day but croissants and pastries, although everything's imported from Balthazar Bakery.
Friends:   Sometimes too many and that's distracting!

On an non-Ost note, this is the second day of my youngest kid's big field trip to Washington DC.  It supplements their yearlong study of American government and manifest destiny.  I'm so excited for my kid, I can hardly stand it, living vicariously through her.  Tonight, she and her classmates take a cruise on the Potomac River!