Today in a coffee shop

Photo: Guelph, St. George's Square, this afternoon.

~~~~~~~~~~

Too many writers have written great books and gone insane or alcoholic or killed themselves. This [writing practice] teaches about sanity. We are trying to become sane along with our poems and stories.

~Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

~~~~~~~~~~

A little old woman sits in the Bookshelf Café. She is not especially old, but very little. Her round-rimmed glasses take up most of her face under the bowl-edged bangs of her pewter hair. She often sits at this same table near the cash register, where she can see everyone who comes through the door. Her clothing is generally understated. Today she wears a greenish-black wool vest over a dark blouse and skirt. The mug of latté she cradles in her hands is as wide as her jaw.

A young server comes through the door to start her shift. Ziggy, remember the pretty blonde I complimented on her neck chain? The lady greets her by name; the girl stops to chat with her and announces her birthday is coming up.

"Mine is the fifth!" says the lady. "Are you a Scorpio, too?"

They proceed to compare Scorpio notes. My younger daughter is a Scorpio. The young woman relates details an astrologer told her. But someone in the back has started a cappuccino machine, drowning her adjectives.

"Passionate!" the young woman's voice rises above the din, and she repeats it for emphasis: "Passionate!"

Finally the noise stops.

"I got a lot of the Sensitive," the lady says.

"Sensitive, yeah, I'm really sensitive."

Now the older woman begins describing a speaker she heard, perhaps a writer, artist or astrologer. A guru, in any case. Her words are expressive, gestures wide as short arms will reach. Her voice descends to a deep alto when she imitates him.

"He's not a run-of-the-mill personality."

She should know, this little woman who measures the height and breadth of everyone who enters the coffee shop.

"If you sit here long enough you can see everybody you want to see from this chair," she says. "They might not see me."

She loves this chair, calls The Bookshelf an institution. Finally she realizes she has detained her audience: "Do you have to work now?"

The pretty blonde looks at the clock and says yes, she ought to start soon. But still she stands and listens to the little woman for a few minutes longer.

"You're a good listener," says the lady. "You would make a good counsellor."

Eventually the young woman disappears into the back of the restaurant, soon to reappear with a cloth for wiping tables. The lady sits alone with her big mug again. Her eyes follow the movements of customers leaving and entering. Just once her grey eyes rest in mine for a moment, the eyes of a curious heart. I believe she lives alone.

Lucid dream and a map of LiveJournal

A reference to dreams in someone else's journal reminded me of two things I dreamt last night.

But first: I have finally discovered a simple way to get myself to bed earlier. I don't know why this didn't occur to me sooner. Remeron makes me drowsy, but not right away. I usually take it when I go to bed. This week I had the brainstorm to try taking it ahead of bedtime. Last night I popped the pill a few minutes after midnight. By 1:30 I couldn't keep my eyes open and toddled off to bed. That's significantly earlier than my habitual time. Now I just have to persuade myself to get up from this chair and head to the medicine cabinet a little earlier each night. That won't be easy as it sounds.

So my head hit the pillow and I immediately started lucid dreaming. By this I mean dreams in which I'm aware that I'm dreaming and can manipulate my experience accordingly. Soporific drugs seem to have that effect, which I've experienced only a handful of times in my life.

I remember something about a colouring book. The picture showed a woman's hair, long and flowing, with wide bands for different colours. I wanted to colour it in. I also wanted to arise and fetch my notebook from the other room and record the dream, but with that thought I lost consciousness. The sensation of remembering how and when I fell asleep is rare and uncanny for me.

This morning I woke from a dream about LiveJournal. It appeared as a diagram, in fact it resembled a city transit map, with thick lines stretching between terminals, representing users. The lines actually looked like hollow tubes or subway lines. The map I saw only contained three users with lines between them in a contorted triangle. ghostsandrobots and I were two of the terminals, and we needed to reach the third person quickly. He had caused some kind of disturbance in the community, perhaps by feigning suicide.