Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Funny how memory serves and disserves us. My recollection of events varies from others. Not surprising; so much of it is shaped and handled by private agendas, shaded by emotions, chiseled by what has happened since.
I know it’s a component of why I write. Trying to understand the intricacies of memories and the dynamics of being, I look into myself for understanding and then spin this process into fiction.
Just more first world blues, but I’m bummed out by those automatic toilets which flush while I’m still doing my business. Then, when I do finish my biz, it doesn’t flush, forcing me to search for the magic button to make it happen.
I mean, what exactly is that thing sensing when it flushes and doesn’t? Or is it just messing with me?
The coffee shop was busy. Only a few tables were available.
But I found one with what I needed: table and seat, a smidge of privacy, ‘puter power.
I set myself up, turned on and tuned in. Then amused myself. When coffee shops and cafes are busy like this, I always entertaining a thin fantasy that we’re in a business on a starship heading to another planet.
No real reason for the fantasy except that I find it fun.
A friend was telling me about his eye-sight deteriorating, which got me thinking. I finally asked him, “How are your ear-hearing and brain-thinking?”
I saw an online headline:
‘Grizzly bears to be reintroduced’
That’s nice, I thought, a grizzly romance, or maybe just a friendship. I wonder how they reconnected? Social media, like Bearbook?
The weather has pressed pause on the rain. Shards of broken sunshine are coming through but as soon as they broach the dark clouds’ defenses, a new mass of clouds rush in to patch it up.
A refrigerating breeze circles the streets with a load of petrichor. Like a madeleine for Prost, the petrichor delivers stacks of memories. I flash to being a boy in Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills, PA, a young airman in Korea and Germany, a tourist walking outside a tavern on a darkening day to visit with Dad in West Virginia.
Such is the power of smells to foster memories.
I encountered a man yesterday as I was walking along a street. I wear a hat with ‘flair’, and it attracted him. He wanted to see my US flag one. As he admired it, he asked, “What’s that beneath your flag pin?”
“That’s my retired USAF pin.”
“Oh, you were in the Air Force.”
The Neurons jumped up with responses like, “No, I just like the pin.”
I beat The Neurons back and answered, “Yes, I was.”
I wondered what his Neurons were saying to him about his question. I imagine they were like Homer Simpson’s neurons, muttering, “That’s it, I’m out of here,” followed by footsteps and a slamming door.
I was skateboarding the net yesterday, swerving from click to click. An ad bounced up for an Ashlandia coffee shop I used to regularly frequently. It permanenly closed due to the pandemic, Jan 2021.
My backstory is that I enjoy coffee shops as a place to write. I began doing that when I started working from home and began writing short stories in parallel. I use the process of going to the coffee shop as a method to put on my writing hat and throw off the rest of the world. Finding the right place is a challenge. There’s the taste. Location. Prices. Staff. Decent writing surface and a place to plug in. Wifi is a nice convenience to add.
The coffee’s shop closure during the pandemic was the abridged edition. Located in a hotel, a husband and wife team managed it on behalf of her father. He owned the hotel He came in one December day and told them that plans were changing. They protested. The exchange grew angry and loud. The husband and wife were fired.
I’d been loyal to them. The staff walked out with the managers in protest. Long-time customers like me left and didn’t return. They made changes. I visited once a few months later. It wasn’t the same. Management declared after that that only hotel guests were welcome. That was only in the morning.
Replacing it had been difficult. An ad to come patron it surprised me. I checked online: permanently closed, according to its FB page and website.
But businesses are often shoddy about keeping their social presence online up to date. I drove by. Dark. Empty. Closed.
I went on to my new favorite coffee shop. I’ve already lost four Ashlandia coffee shops in the nineteen years I’ve lived here. Hope I don’t lose a fifth. Yes, it’s all about me.
Still, I had to ponder the business intricacies that had an ad for a closed business riding on the net. Sometimes, it’s still garbage in, garbage out.
Michael Seidel, writer 