tall orders

Today was uneventful except it marked another safe passage to Foster Gresham to get the much coveted chicken and potato burrito from Taco Johns with Chris. In other news, we are soon placing an order of a ridiculous amount of alcohol to be delivered into our dorm room. It's probably around 3 gallons of various liquors all combined.

While I was walking out to class today I was thinking about writing a lot, but now most of those thoughts are gone from my mind. There's something about the cracked asphalt in the parking lot behind the crosstown shopping center that gets my marbles rolling. I'm always staring down at the sidewalk which has been perpetually covered with snowmelt lately and I usually come up with ideas. Hard to write on the go so my best thoughts usually float past me.

The transfer process is almost done but I keep putting off the final steps. I have to send a letter to Michigan explaining my dropping German and I have to pay the credit card payment for State. Can't ask mom because she's broke and I can't ask dad because he'll drag me around for a week before he'll give it to me. I guess that's not entirely true; if I asked, he'd give me his number but I'd have to listen to him talk more about New World Order fantasies and about applying to schools in Colorado. Plus then there would be the misplaced guilt I'd feel at asking him for money.

In short I filed an application for my own credit card today with frequent flyer miles on it so maybe that will get here fast enough that I can pay for it on my own. I remember something from earlier now though.

It was about writing, life, and the name of this blog. When I was naming this I had the image of a guy dressed like I've been dressed in the dorm lately: dark, baggy sweats, a white undershirt that's been worn several times too many, unkempt hair, and red eyes from not being a morning person. This person would go into your typical American diner somewhere- maybe from being up all night- and would sit down and order a coffee.

He would go sit down in a booth by the window where the blinds are down, and hold a cup of black coffee in a chipped white mug in between his cold hands. The sun would slowly rise bleeding pink and orange through the blinds, and this nondescript midwestern diner would look like something out of old California- an outpost marking the farthest discovered point in the West, the beyond being unknown.

The man has come to write, and his coffee is the jet fuel he needs to do it. He's not a morning person and he's burdened by lack of ambition, past demons, whatever else. As people file in, the diner looks more and more like a sanctuary. There is only the present for this man, and the future looks bright regardless of how bleak the outside is.

To me, the empty shell of a man writing in the diner early in the morning is a universal symbol. Some of the best artists of our generation have risen through the ranks this way, by filing into coffeeshops in the morning and cranking words out, even when they didn't want to.

I always wondered about universal symbols. There are certain things in western culture that have immutable meanings. If a guy comes up to a fork in the road, it means he's at a pivotal moment in his life: it represents decision, fate, time, whatever. Does a fork in the road mean the same thing in Mongolia? I don't know the answer to that but I would imagine it probably does. Who knows.

Besides the point. Robert Frost has already milked the forked road for all it's available meaning, but I still love the themes he had his fingers tangled in there. So, my warm little coffeeshop with a hungover bum writing in it will fill in for this old image. It could have been more original, or more fresh, but nevermind- I think Starbucks might be the face of our generation.