Here's the story: so I was way far out in that crooked borough-- you know the one-- and I had some time to kill between a teaching gig and an interview for another teaching gig. I sought refuge in an establishment called the MochaLatteChino Coffee Shop* WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN a surefire sign that nothing good would happen inside of those doors. But I happen to like mochas and lattes and (cappu)chinos individually (even if lumped together such caffeine-morphemes produce a vaguely racist-sounding neologism). So I went in. I ordered the second kind of coffee beverage contained in the name of the place. I sat down near the window. From my bag I extracted my glitchy but steadfast portable computer companion, and pondered all of the unfinished projects and broken dreams therein. I resolved to tackle a percentage of a percentage of one. Then I saw that my battery charge was also at a percentage of a percentage of one. I surveyed the perimeter of the room and, seeing no outlet, asked a barista, who feinted to lead me somewhere but then was summoned by her Balkans-ish alpha-seeming boss dude and wordlessly pivoted and left me in the corner, bereft of oases for my electronics. Another employee flatly informed me that there were no outlets in the building. NO OUTLETS? I was incensed: what the FUCK kind of self-respecting coffee-specializing small business with purported free wifi would unapologetically deny its customers a chance to tank up their devices? ("No Outlets: An Existential Tale for the Digital Age.") The whole point of a coffee shop is to buy a beverage and stare at a screen! This is the TWENTY-FIRST century, betches: the coffeehouse culture of yore, the electric intellectual foment, the meet-cute potentiality, the community-center proxydom, all have given way to the New World Order, which is that I want to drink my Frankenlatte in peace and not talk to anyone and pretend to be writerly for a few minutes before zoning out to social media, as also seen in My Living Room and My Bedroom, where coincidentally there are also some FUCKING OUTLETS so that I can charge my junk. Christ on a Cracker.
(* name of coffeeshop has been changed, slightly, to sound more generic and more racist)
And then I swiveled my head and saw, by the front door, next to a pile of three sandbags, a perfectly functional electrical outlet. The lying liars had lied. I made a beeline for the entryway and plugged in my poor oxygen-deprived baby and placed her lovingly on the sandbag pillow (how thoughtful of the owners) and retreated to my window-side table to sip and wait. At which point the Balkansian head-dude-in-charge, flanked by his sullen baristas, emerged irate from behind the counter to tell me that my computer was in a highly visible and trafficked space in the cafe and that I was "free" to leave it there but that they would incur no responsibilities if the laptop were to be stolen or damaged. I spat back that WELL then they shouldn't have placed the shop's single outlet in the most useless place imaginable, and that I would keep my property within my field of vision at all times and that I would maul any degenerate attempting to abscond with my
That shut them up. I waited for the charge to take effect, never letting the laptop out of my sight, and when enough time had passed, I stalked performatively across the room and tenderly scooped it up, giving the staff a sassy velociraptor head-swivel as if to say "look who's not damaged! look who survived because she has a mama bear who will bat for her in this broken world of obstructioners and nonbelievers!" and I stalked performatively back to the windowside table, and performatively opened the laptop (43% charged, robust and healthy) and performatively touched my fingertips together, Mr. Burns-style, in search of the ideal writerly enterprise. Schoolwork? You jest. Resuscitation of neglected friendships via the emailz? No, I was too prickly a creature at the moment. Schlock-Blog? ... hold up, that could be just the thing.
(....But but but I don't do that anymore, the era is passed, I peaked and all further attempts to write have fizzled because of I don't even know exactly what, the self-inflicted pressure, the perfectionism, the real-life-actually-getting-better and necessitating less escapism, the natural turning-inward that came with being in a sustained, functional relationship with a human male, the slightest incipient inkling of distaste for exhibitionism [lulznotreally], the sense that I should be writing Stuff of Substance instead of dicking around, the sense that maybe I could still dick around but that I should at least get paid for it, the fact that with these new perceived pressures I didn't write anything-- of a dicking or non-dicking nature-- at all, and then, of course, the onset of my old friend Inertia. Oh it's nigh impossible to do something when you haven't been doing it. It takes phenomenal energy to spark a beginning; an object not in motion will never be in motion unless acted on by outside forces, etcetera etcetera, but now I'm suddenly feeling like there are some EXTREME outside forces in this coffee shop that are pissing me off to such an extent that the only possible course of action, according to the laws of physic, would be to... blog it. The Blog Bang. The Big Blog. The Bling Bong. Okay. Okay. OKAY!!!)
The momentous decision made, I moseyed to the internet to log into Blogger. Only-- the internet did not mosey me halfway. In fact, it seemed to function according to the principles of the coffee shop's staff. It hovered. It pretended to load, but did not. It deceived me. I tried again. It lied, again.
At this point I wasn't exactly in a position to ask anyone for assistance, having alienated the locals with my swag and 'tude. Bah. I would have to take matters into my own hand. Perhaps my window seat was too peripheral, just outside the wifi dome, excluded from the kingdom of heaven. I headed to a more centrally-located table, Javacioppino in hand, and placed the computer on the table and then the drink and then NOOOOOOOOO switch to SLOW-MO and THE PRESENT TENSE AAAAAAH one leg of the table is unbalanced GAAAAAH and rickety and OH GOD NOOOOO the styrofoam cup bobbles and a sheen of coffee-milk launches into the air, droplets suspended, a beigey Jackson Pollack at the moment of creation only the canvas happens to be MY POOR COMPUTER OH CRUEL WORLD and I look on, powerless, as the liquid does as liquid does, which is to adapt its shape to immediately available space, of which there is plenty in the crevasses of the keyboard and trackpad NOO in it goes NOOO a force, an inevitability, unintercetptible by my modest human means NOOOOO. FUCK.
.... So it was written: that there would be damage done unto The Precious at the MocachinoHellscape Place. It was as though the owner had foreseen everything when he yelled at me, or-- conspiracy!-- had actually sent out a secret army of diabolical shadow- minions to first knock out the internet and then destabilize the table at which I would inevitably attempt to sit. That would be my luck, to shore up at the one coffee shop in Crooklyn that is in league with the dark arts. (Ha-- "the one," as if-- they all are.)
I sat staring into space for a long moment. Then turned off the computer. Then dampened a paper towel in the bathroom, and came back out and applied it gently to the afflicted areas. Then turned the computer back on. It flickered to life! We were in the clear! But wait-- as I tripped over my proverbial hem to attempt internet access afresh, I ran into... mouse problems. (Not like the mouse problems in my apartment, although those exist too). The cursor would glide o'er the screen as directed, for a time, only to stop and freeze and then change directions for the hell of it, like an ADHD five-year-old tasked with playing the piano. I tried and tried and tried. The mouse/ trackpad seemed to have about a 30% functionality. A get-your-hopes-up only to trample them, very frustrating percentage of functionality.
And in that moment, all I wanted to do was write in my blog. I wanted to relay the ridiculousness and minutiae of my afternoon precisely because my apparatus was compromised, because my freedom-to-relay was snatched away in the instant that a small volume of shitty coffee beverage traced a parabolic path from cup to laptop cranny.
"But Alana, your blog exists on the in-ter-net, so you can access it from any computer." But I've written 90% of the content from this very specific computer! I got it in the summer of 2011 and helmed this Schlockatorium shortly thereafter. They're connected. "But it's just a device, an erstwhile-shiny-currently-dingy white content-delivery system identical to millions of others that were manufactured off of an assembly line of incomprehensible evil." But the soulless thing became my soul-spilling platform! Look at the soul that got spilled. (*Sob* and look at what else got spilled). "But you stopped spilling. You watched a lot of internet TV and bought things on eBay and basically just used your evil device to consume, not create." I know! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I told you why, a few paragraphs up. I got blocked. I didn't know if anybody wanted to read my shiz. I was happy in real life with a human male. "But the human male loves you and wants to see you create! He wants to be folded quasi-tastefully into your tasteless stories. Your friends have said the same." But they're just being supportive. "So what if they are? Were you ever writing solely for the benefit of others? You derive a fulfillment from it that's all your own."
Fine, fine, I do feel most essentially myself when engaged in the distillation process of life-into-prose. But what then? When have I gotten somewhere, when have I arrived? "You don't! Or if you do, it's incidental and not the point. Tell me, Alana, you have a piano teacher, right? See-More? The octogenarian?" Yes. Don't try to change the subject. But-- hang on-- how do you know about See-More? "I have my ways. Don't worry about it. Tell me one of the first things that he said to you." Um, that I was sitting too high at the keyboard? "Come on. Stop squirming. The important stuff." Okaaaaay fiiine. He told me that our essence resides in our talent, and that when we neglect our talent, our lives become unbalanced and we go awry. "And what is your talent?" See, that's the thing, I despise the "T" word because I still associate it with 'wasted potential.' A term to be used against me when I have inevitably disappointed. "See-More doesn't think so." Well, yes, he takes a broader view. To him, our talent is not what we excel at, but the truest expression of who we are. "And who are you?" Erm, a person who is her deepest self when concocting a baroque, overblown, and completely unnecessary re-telling of coffee-shop laptop shenanigans as some kind of obtuse and labored metaphor for the re-awakening of the divine creative spark...?
"That's right. You know it. Now go forth and be that self. Your laptop is fritzing: let it be a reminder that tomorrow we shall die. Seize the un-fritzing moments, for they will be few and far between. When the frequency of fritzing becomes unbearable, rely on those around you. Your human male, loving and supportive as he is, will get you an external mouse when he sees your distress: you ought to thank him by writing about him on the internet, because you can, because the external mouse will buy you some time (but still, there's not enough time, it's later than you think). Then you must write about studying Brahms with See-More, and all the rest, the Craigslist couch expedition and the time that you got conscripted as an accompanist for the kiddie CATS community theater production in Blurzy (schlock amber alert! jump on that) and it's not that the public even needs to know, it's not that they crave the scenarios and the specifics, or that you even crave their approval that much, but that you will be your most divine and godly iteration of you when you engage. When you pontificate about CATS and coffee spills. And when you are being you-est, it will radiate outward: an infinitesimal harmonization will occur in the world. But anyway. You need to get your ass out of this Caffechino-Inferno. Give the staff a final stink-eye. Sue them for damages to your laptop. Stalk performatively out the door. And write in your goddam blog, for tomorrow we shall--" Okay. OKAY!! Okay.
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