It’s been too long, my friends.

Life update

I am writing this in an oceanside café. The sun rises on the other side of the street. Hot water steams in a jug. The barista is busy serving takeaway customers. My bus will leave soon but I am ensconced by the cozy, corner table. There is so much to tell you. I will try to be quick.

The barista has one hand on the machine and half an eye on the door. He shifts into a familial tone, he knows this customer. Here I am, the observer, a listener. A coffee sipper with too many scraps of paper.

Some of my thoughts are blue ink. Others are red, black, dog eared and soggy from sitting at the bottom of my bag.

The barista, I heard, is moving houses. He talks to a gumboot customer. An offer is laid upon the counter. A six pack of beer for an hour of time. This man, I presume, has a horse trailer and a sincere desire to help.

I have neither. The coffee flowers in my mind. I become irradiated by the kindness of humans. It is too much. I take my thoughts with me and extract great pleasure from etching them onto the grapevine. It does not pay to gossip, maybe this is why I am broke. I scribble this onto another scrap of paper and underline the sentence: is it possible to change feel-good-guilty behaviors?