As I sat this morning at the breakfast table, as so many other mornings, staring through my computer as the steam rose from my coffee, up towards the tall ceilings of our otherwise humbly portioned studio, as my sublunary lover, at her grand artist’s drafter, a great four-poster of a table, sat low, her eye close to her skilled hand as it washed the toothsome sheet with blue figures bound across the axis bearing tattoos of silky meanings, I saw into the faded distance not a truth but a feeling of my own dull sense twined with a not unloved thread of patience.
Anyone past the age of seven knows it takes an hour or more for the newly awakened soul to catch up with their body. So, it was surprising to me that I was beholding something truly spiritual this early in the day. I didn’t quite believe it, to tell the truth, so I took a good glug of coffee.
Having poured enough in to pound a pot on a ponies penny, I tried to jumpstart my powers of sensual perception. I can only imagine what expression came over my face as I attempted to reflect on the coming day’s literary enterprise. All I needed was a simple beginning for a piece to rip towards a decent end. But the problem was, there were too many ways to start, and I couldn’t find one of them.
It's times like these that make shoplifters.
I drained away the remainder of my cup and put it next to the travel thermos that held the rest of the brew. I ate no meal, but I did furtively bless myself with an improvised set of gestures marking to no particular deity, just in case there was more than sodden madness stirring.
After that, did I pack? Did I leave?
No.
I sat longer while a perturbing hissing sound began to creep behind my ears like a prose poem. It gave me some of the unsettling vim of just such an ill-fed idea and I began to be aware of an involuntary, but slight smile curving the side of my lip.
It seemed that the hissing came from the hot air escaping the insulated travel thermos with coffee—”sssssssssss” it had all the gentle persistence of a dream snake.
Did I have any sense of the physics behind this phenomenon?
No. I just knew that the hissing was blending over into a faint burble as raindrops pattered against the window wells and the sidewalk right outside our front door.
I heard the whoosh of the dubiously legal furnaces that heat our apartment and the creaking of the dryer on the floor above us. The dryer that sounded earlier like a hooting owl and then sounded like the trapped cries of an eternal ghost, punished by the gods for either an obscurer attempt at aiding humanity than giving fire or —-maybe—-- for trying to introduce the gift of quiet.
The hot air grew fainter and drafted on a less regular cycle, losing power as the heat inside the chamber slowly dissipated
A car whooshed by on the wet street. Another.
In a futile attempt to postpone full entropy, I swished and gurgled the coffee, and took some little pleasure from its sound, and took some little sense from the playacting of a private tasting note charade. “Subtle hints of leather, pepper, banana, and procrastination.”
The coffee now gone, the cup and thermos now empty, was I ready to get from studio to studio and face the day's work?
No.