good evening.right now i should be writing on the twenty page portfolio that i have to turn in next week. or the article that i failed to turn in on wednesday (for the first time all semester–it doesn't feel good and yet i have yet to fix the situation). instead i am writing this blog, maybe i'm hoping some focus will come from it. like if i write something low pressure like this i can get some work done on serious stuff.
i have also decided capitalization will not happen this post. go figure.
right now i am sitting in the prime corner booth of tate street coffee house listening to elijah ogden go to town with his acoustic guitar. i love coffee shops. each are unique and i could sit all day in this environment. let me clarify, individual coffee houses, starbucks is only delightful to meet someone in, it feels something akin to a office space to me. too uniform. too commercial. it doesn't have to be a hodge-podgey mess inside like tate street (which is full of very random, and in some places regrettably awkward art and a delightful mish-mash of chairs and tables: example, before i got the booth with they upholstered top i was at a half-moon shaped table with a sun painted on it) but it does need something unique, that someone in a office didn't decide should be there (like in coffeology, there is an odd painting of a man in a black hoodie in front of a gold sun behind the register, and one day i saw him stopping in for coffee. i don't even want to ask about it because the mystery is too fun).
tate street's samoan latte, and coffeology's baci latte are competing hard to be my favorite.
right now i am sitting the back of the long room that makes up the sitting area in tate street. i am sitting watching all the people coming in and out and feeling nostalgic. i love this. this way to spend an evening. this city. there are so many places that i would love to live, i never figured greensboro would be one of them. i have maintained the position that i could never be happy in a city and maybe greensboro, being small of size and full of green loving hippies that have established nearly as many parks as parking lots, has spoiled me. maybe i'm just overly content and can find something to love everywhere i go, but if i am not living here next year i will miss it.
i think the large in-house latte is smaller than the to-go one. i have considered feeling gypped, but decided there are more important things to be up in arms about.
right now i am thinking about the idea of missing. we miss people, places, things. what does that mean? what is the logic of missing something? does it imply discontent or just a love that wants to defy separation? you miss something when you don't have it, but you want it, so i suppose it could be both. i aspire to miss things not out of discontent, but out of the deep love. i have talked to people who believe that relationships are somewhat ended or at least majorly affected by distance. whether that be physical or emotional distance. for example if someone moves across the country but you still talk not much will change, but if you live down the road from each other and work in the same place and go to the same church but don't talk then that is emotional distance. i will not disagree completely, i will also not disagree whole heartedly. i have friendships that remain just as strong though there has been nearly a year with little to no contact. i can't explain that. i also have relationships that seem strong but all but dissipate over the course of a few months with no clear assignment of blame. what is the qualifier? this is something that has never bothered me much because i have from a young age resolved within myself to be a friend to whoever i meet for as long as i live. i may have no contact with someone for years, but if they called and asked for help or wanted to catch up, i like to think that i would do my best to be there for them. the problem with this mindset is has left me with a somewhat one-sided view of friendship. i just don't think about many other people's side of the friendship, or rather i don't think about anyone else wanting to be my friend. i have a hard time imagining that. not necessarily as some form of low self-esteem, but out of a basic assumption that hardly any one (and believe me there are a growing number exceptions to this so don't feel slighted if you are reading this...because i have so many people in my life that bless my socks off) appeared to care as much as i did. then i got to thinking outside myself and how apathetic i know i can appear and decided that i probably look pretty uncaring to a lot of people when i'm really not because people don't go around with the words, "hey, i'm your friend unconditionally" written across their foreheads. it is something that many people wouldn't buy even if it was written there, because friendship tends to be best shown in action and if i went ten years without contacting a friend they would probably have little reason to call despite my honest intention to be there for them because i have done little to prove it. so its cyclical. and my friend is not very wrong at all about the basic, just maybe not as positive about the mechanics of the idea.that did not end up being so much about missing as it did about friendship. whoops. who knew?
right now i have not written a word for my homework. but i cleared my head a little of thoughts (about friendship? no idea that was up there) so now i will close with an ode, in prose, to how much i love writing and how it almost always gives me more than i gave it. that was it (the ode). now i'm going to wrap it up and decided whether i want to stay in this booth with ray lamontange for the next hour and attempt homework or decide that it is saturday and its okay i've ignored it then write my own stuff or go home, watch some bones and hit the hay.
final sidebar: what people chose to wear is quite simply fascinating.
