Simple story

A simple story. I wanted to tell a simple story. Not one of those too contrived to understand, to relate to. Most people don’t have interesting enough lives to relate to such elaborate imagery.

I’d say the typical person might know what it’s like to go to a coffee shop. To get there, find yourself on a line knowing what you’re going to get but looking at the menu anyway. Getting impatient with everyone at the register for ordering too many things, and for just taking too long. Even though you’re not in a rush you find reasons to be upset and unsatisfied. What if you were stuck in this cafe for all eternity. Would that be an appropriate hell?

Though I’m currently unaware, the manner of my moods unraveling as I’m ordering my coffee at this cafe is a condensed reflection of their eventual fluctuation throughout my day. Uncomfortable says it best. The intoxication of the atmosphere awakens in me a unique perception of my surroundings, for an evaporating moment all around had grown too silly and made me realize the reason for my out of placeness.

I was in this room with my fellow people. Men, women, children, all sorts and types, and yet none of us, save the cashier (who had a drone like consistency even with the generic highs and lows of intonation that were imbued into her shpiel), had made even the slightest effort to communicate with one another. Rather, everyone was lost in a daze-like consistency with their eyes reflecting an unreceptive glaze, consumed in a world of imaginary ideals that were floating too far above the world they were assumed to represent (did gravity even any longer constrain them?). It was the closest to, not death, but the lack of connection to reality that surprised me. And with crude shame I had to admit myself as no different; only for this fleeting moment did I engage in such a vivid canvass of my surroundings, while if any one elses glance connected with mine I would have instantly broken away and tried to protect myself in reverie.

Yet why does it continually bother me? Knowing all too well by now how it will be this way, and then another way with its own deficiencies and problems, and another and another after that. So why do I care? Why does this keep coming to the forefront of my consciousness, even though I would be the first person to try and avoid any of this mutual interest, curiosity, I see so lacking in front of me. "We are all such beings that grapple every day anew with the force of life weighing heavy and heavier upon us!" That is what every single soul in that room wishes to yell, with their own expressions to be sure, for if they wanted they could easily muster such a cry with wholehearted passion. Yet instead they pretend they are each the last person to do so. The last to be any different from the rest. "Do not look at me," Instead they try to say with their bodies and expressions.

Just then I hear my name called. My coffee is ready. I walk over and grab it. Delight stirs throughout me. I walk away and back to my car, sipping on an invigoration that slowly perfuses me. What was I thinking about again? As I walk past the glassy exterior of the store next door I find my face reflected and lose myself to self appraisals. Then I notice a nice car drive by.