On Writing in a Cafe
You find yourself in a crowded cafe. It is the lunch hour. The tables are packed with people and food and conversation. There is the clattering of silverware and the hiss of freshly brewing coffee. There is even the clack-clack-clack of your fingers whizzing across your keyboard.
But that is what you came here for, after all. Home would be too cozy today, luring you to your patio with birdsong and dappled sunlight, or to your bedroom where a stack of books awaits your eager gaze--if you enter the kitchen, you are lost for there would be no little recipe that you wouldn't be tempted to try. So you put on a dress and headed to a place far noisier, but with significantly fewer distractions.
With this hustle and bustle, this active living swirling around you like a heady perfume, you are finally able to sink into yourself, to hear what it is you want to say today. The buzz of everyday life becomes a soothing beat that allows you to slip into your own meditative thoughts, to breathe and be and write.
Soon, when you've released all the words in you for the day, spinning them out of your fingertips to your blog, when you've allowed your mind to settle and come back to the present moment, you look around and tune into the cafe noise again. It has, if anything, only grown in fervor. It is the little details you notice first: you cup of tea cooled beside you, the lemon slice lying discarded next to your cup; the smell of freshly baked bread; the new people occupying the table next to yours. Your words begin to fade as the buzz of activity around you intensifies--it is time to rejoin this bustle of everyday life.