Friday Change
Slow for a Friday, the coffee shop was relatively quiet. The baristas’ joking behind the counter was actually heard across the business.
Only three other patrons occupied tables. Regulars, he knew their names, drinks, and faces. He supposed that they knew the same for him. Maybe not. Maybe they weren’t as observant as him or didn’t care.
A thin sigh passed his lips. He was supposed to be writing but it was one of those days when procrastination stopped him like a mudslide blocking a road. He was a little bored, tired, and restless. I’ll begin in a minute, he told himself, and noted the time. Yeah, like he was really that disciplined and focused. More coffee will help, he decided.
Reaching for the cup, he glanced at the coffee shop table. The blond wood – he didn’t know what kind it was – had a dark knot which resembled a mustache. As he chuckled at that, he spotted two small symmetrical knots above the mustache. They were like eyes, he mused, sipping coffee.
The eyes blinked at him.
His body quailed with alarm as his mind shouted, “What the hell?” He set the coffee down.
A new knot rose, forming a mouth below the mustache.
He looked around the coffee shop. No one was near. He wanted to show someone as validation for his sanity, and then pulled out his phone to photograph the small developing face. As he raised the phone for the photo, the mouth moved.
“Help me,” he heard. “Help.”
Pulling back, he lowered the phone. Friday was about to change in ways he’d never planned.
Friday’s Wandering Thought
He found a bank card in an ATM. The machine was beeping and asking, “Are you done with your transaction?” No one else was around so he took the card into the bank and turned it over to a teller, telling them where he’d found it. As he was leaving, he heard people saying, “Oh, what a nice man.”
That surprised him. What else would you do with anything found but try to get it back to the owner in the best way possible?
Friday’s Theme Music
Our sprawling Christmas Cactus is resplendent with large red flowers on its window perch. Wind dances with trees outside the glass. Grass and bushes shiver under the wind’s tickle. 36 degrees F outside, sunshine washes over valley as the clouds have surrendered the sky to blue. It’s Friday, December 16, 2022, just five sleeps from winter solstice and two weeks and a day to 2022’s end.
Our weather has been pingponging between rain, high winds, and then days of freezing fog and stagnant air. Hope this day brings on a change. I don’t think I’m really a winter person. Today’s high will be 46 but the wind’s northern mountain ice edge will make you think it’s less. The clock saw 7:33 AM when the valley was gifted the sunlight’s first direct light. Daylight will go until 4:40 this afternoon.
I was given an earworm yesterday. Running errands, music playing, The Neurons heard a song which made me laugh. Then they kept playing it, and here it is, sixteen hours later, hogging the morning mental music stream. I’d never heard “Victoria’s Secret (2022) by Jax before yesterday, but after arriving home and settling in, I looked up the lyrics to confirm what I heard. This is a song pushing back against body types and body shaming, focusing on the stereotypical Victora’s Secret model, all boob on a skinny body. I applaud the song. Fake bodies aren’t needed. Nor is starving yourself or “going without carbs” as the song mentions. Our adherence to fake images and the efforts to achieve those is a sickness that undermines our national mental health, as is the whole heavy slant toward the need to be young and pretty, as portrayed too many times in movies, television shows, and advertisements. Hope you’ll give the song a listen. Hope you don’t get stuck on the same line that hooked The Neurons, “Victoria is made up by a dude (dude)!”
Other than weather, writing, exercising, and socializing with people and cats, life is moving at a slower pace. I need to carve out more reading time. That’s my significant complaint, other than the nastiness of life for so many and the general mess called politics. Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Time for my morning coffee rations. Have a super one. Here’s Jax. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 