Monday nights I blog from my BBQ and Bourbon spot outside my second favorite bookstore (Half Price Books still holds all the cool points because of an untouchable selection of vintage books). I use the time to be alone and take in a world that I am not a part of. I’ve come to know the waitstaff and appreciate their familial camaraderie with each other. I am recognized as a regular and appreciated in that sense, but the gems are the food and unfamiliar faces that move through the restaurant as though it were a way station between moments in their daily lives.
As a writer I am first an observer of the human condition (and fully aware of how pretentious that sounds). I see, for example, the crowd of eight men all fitted with beards in various stages of known cool. Two of the men are joined by girlfriends and as a result living on the fringes of the conversation but positioned at the center of the table. I see three ladies barely past their teens and painted in fashions that mark their upbringing and allegiance to the particular styles and cultures that divide them but in the same make them a collective. Each bears a gift that they will exchange at meals end. For now they chat and visit cellphone notices with equal importance. Perhaps they imagine each others lives as their own, and this is a kind of escape from the lives they have.
It is only a glimpse and all I can share in 10 minutes.
Some Thoughts:
- This was written last night and posted today. I get pretty lazy post BBQ.