Tag Archives: coffee shops

Non-fiction

Just a Wednesday

Leave a comment

I wake up and bemoan at the fact that it’s just the middle of the week. It’s difficult to adjust after a short vacation, but now I work all five days. Next week will also be a full week, and then the next two weeks will be short weeks for my birthday. I just hope nothing disastrous happens today, tomorrow, or Friday to totally sabotage my weekend. And disaster usually does strike in some form from my job. I keep telling myself not to let whatever occurs bother me. It’s easy as a reminder.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop. They’ve installed a TV with a styrofoam sheet covering it for some reason. And there’s a green pen lying on the floor with a straw wrapper lying next to it. The old lady with her dog on the pink leash has walked in and found herself a table. The dog wags its tail quickly and snoops around for any crumbs. She wears a red top with honeycomb designs on it, white cotton pants, and pink running shoes. Her dog is hyperactive. Customers walk by and pet it.

There’s a newspaper on the table in the middle of the shop. I didn’t even think they had newspapers anymore, but someone apparently was reading it.

An email came yesterday from WordPress saying a new version is coming, and I would have to change my interface, or else my website won’t function properly. I don’t know what that means. The email instructed me on what to do, and I followed those instructions, just hoping for a positive outcome. The last thing I need is for this website to lose its functionality.

It’s almost seven in the morning. A long day is ahead of me. I have to field inbound calls for my job. Who knows what personality will be on the other end? I wish I didn’t have to do it, but I have to, so I have no choice.

Wednesdays, ugh. At least tomorrow is the street fair in Palm Springs. I wander through it after work and never buy anything. It’s usually trinkets and junk food: two things I can’t afford to have. But the street fair seems so far away.

It’s all based on perception. Time is different from perception. At one moment, time moves quickly, but at another moment, time moves slowly enough to where it freezes, and I stare at the clock, waiting for the next minute to pass.

Not much is happening at the beginning of June. Summer starts. Boredom sets in. It’s going to be a long, hot summer. Summer used to be something to look forward to when I was in school. Now, with work year-round, what else is there to look forward to but dinner?

I eat tacos every night. That’s all I know how to cook. I suppose I could cook a steak, but I need a grill for that, and my kitchen can’t fit one with all the other stuff in there.

Anyway, it’s just Wednesday, and I’m spent. Maybe I’ll rearrange my shoes in the closet.

Fiction

Living in the Desert

Leave a comment

I moved to Palm Springs from Los Angeles this year and haven’t found my way yet. It gets cold in the mornings, to my dislike. I wait for the heat to come and bring me pleasure. As I sit here, outside a coffee shop in La Quinta, the cold winds burn my arms. It’s May. It shouldn’t be like this, but it is.

But it’s only six in the morning. I woke up at five like I always do. I set my alarm for that time. It’s a haunting piano tune on my phone. I should really change it because it scares me. I don’t know what to do with myself in the desert. Sometimes, I daydream about living in a trailer in the middle of the sand, saying, “Forget about a nice home and all those responsibilities,” and going to a trashy diner where no one knows me. I could go back to alcohol. No one has to know.

Where I live, crows dominate the apartments. I don’t know why they’re there. What’re they looking for besides dead squirrels? I know it’s a dark premonition when they fly around me, like a bad fate is coming my way, but I just deal with it as it comes. How tragic can the result be? The crows mean nothing. They’re just another bird.

I walk through downtown, past the little shops and restaurants. Summer is near, so the northern birds have escaped to Canada before the heat—the real heat—eats them up. I’m glad they’re gone and I have the desert to myself. They take up too much space.

I stare ahead at a gas station with the canyons in the background. Another crow flies by. What is it with these goddamn birds? They’re everywhere. The desert is what it’s supposed to be: barren. I don’t miss the traffic in Los Angeles. There’s none here, of course. No one wants to live here when it’s one hundred and ten degrees all day. I don’t mind the heat as opposed to the cold. I say that now before July when I’ll be sweating from the moment I step outside.

The cars begin to collect at the drive-thru. Coffee shops have them now. They didn’t used to. If you were old enough, you would’ve remembered them without one. People sat outside—hipsters, bohemians—and drank their cappuccinos as they talked about trendy bullshit. They smoked their cloves at the tables and snuffed them out in ashtrays. Now it’s all gone. Coffee shops go by corporate laws. They’ve chased away those people as far as I can see. Where do they go now?

I’m at Adams Street and the 111, the highway that leads to Interstate 10. The sun is brightening the brown canyons. Palm trees shiver in the cold morning breeze. I ate an egg sandwich this morning with an iced mocha. It had bacon on an English muffin.

Not a single soul walks by on the sidewalk. No cactus is around either, and cacti are abundant in the desert. But you know that.

In another month I’ll turn forty-seven. Being forty-six was a bitch. I don’t look forward to growing older.

The people are nicer in the desert. They accommodate me, but they’re not perfect.

The breeze is slowing down. Pretty soon, the heat will strike, and I’ll be sweating out here, wishing for the cold to come back.

The blue palo verde, the peacock flower, and the lantana wiggle in the wind. Some of the petals have been blown off, leaving just the green leaves. The sun hits my back, and I feel warmer now.

I’m going to hit tennis balls today on Mother’s Day. That’s if the tennis courts are open. You never know on a holiday like this.

Fiction

People at the Shop.

Leave a comment

The same old customers come into the store each morning. I see the red-bearded man with a bald head and tribal earrings in his earlobes as he sits in his wheelchair, talking with the other old men at a long oval table. He’s tatted from his neck on down to his shins. A lot of older men have tattoos these days. And I always used to wonder how people would age with ink all over themselves.

There’s the man who looks Italian with slicked hair and a gold Rolex type of watch who always sits at the end with those men. He bridges his fingers a lot and gesticulates. He seems to be the talker among their tribe.

And then of course, the old lady with her dog. She dresses extravagantly each morning when she steps inside the coffee shop. I’ve never bothered to ask her what she’s drinking, not that it matters too much. She wears huge designer sunglasses, so huge that they cover half of her forehead. She always wears expensive knitted sweaters and cloth pants, always with a smile.

The same woman comes in every day to talk to her, with the red hair, always with a smile too.

I know the baristas’ faces by now, but not their names. They’re all fast-paced, busy beavers with the customers’ drinks. They all smile even when they’re not helping anyone.

I see the nice Chinese man.

I see the older man, who looks like the district manager.

I see a younger man with a mustache who’s new to me. Where did he come from?

And where’s the exotic barista this morning? The one who wears the big glasses, who looks Pacific.

Most of them know me by name by now since I come here every morning. It’s a refuge from the isolation of home.

A lady in a motorized wheelchair has just rolled in. She wears a surgeon’s mask, a flower hat, and Crocs. She’s talking to a homeless man who can’t stand or sit still. I see him every day, too. He has some sort of disease. I don’t know what it is. I smile at him and say hello. He wears a lot of different clothes, and it makes me wonder where he got them from.

You need a code to use the restroom. Most days it’s one two three four. But they change it up.

I order the same things every day: a cold brew and a cheese Danish. And I sit here for hours and observe people. Most of them are so friendly. The town is friendly. They open doors for each other. It isn’t like it was in Los Angeles.

The baristas give free coffee to the homeless man.

The woman in the motorized wheelchair has her drink, and she and the homeless man continue talking.

I don’t know where I would be without this place. Probably somewhere, walking aimlessly, as I need to stay active to let my anxieties abate. I feel safe in here. I leave my laptop at my table to take a break outside and not worry a thing about it. People don’t steal here. It’s almost a utopia.

I hear them call out names for the people whose drinks are ready.

Where did the lady in the wheelchair go? She’d disappeared while I was deep in thought.

More dogs have entered the shop. They play with each other. The old lady with the big sunglasses holds her white dog by its purple leash. I don’t know its breed, nor do I know any of their breeds. Random people, such as the Italian man, pet the dogs as they come by. I don’t pet the dogs. I feel like I’m not permitted to. They don’t belong to me. It’s like if someone parks a motorcycle and I hop on and squeeze the handles. Maybe it’s a little different. The old lady’s dog has sniffed my deck shoes before, and I don’t mind one bit. She would pull the dog away like it was bothering me, but not at all. I welcome any dog. I welcome anyone in here, my home away from home.