Day Off ...

Boring and pedantic thoughts. What's that mean? I think about things that seem at the same time deep and commonplace. Like time. Teenagers in a cafe taking pictures of themselves and enjoying the first real summer day, waiting for school to end while I enjoy my first real day off in weeks. Their experience of time is different from mine. I remember being a teenager and thinking about time being compartmentalized and compressed. Of course I had all the usual angst and anxiety about the expansiveness of time and infinities, but real life time seemed so regular: school, no school, summers, weekends, classes, assignments, semesters, TV shows. When I became an adult, time seemed to unroll in front of me like a giant carpet. Winters and summers, days and nights, weekdays and weekends, nothing was preset. All my unusual jobs, partying, traveling, friends and girlfriends, there were no rules about time and, as much as I've always tried to control it by imposing routines - exercising, writing, eating, sleeping – taming it and understanding it has always been out of reach.

My first real day off in three weeks. I've no idea why I'm working so much. More thoughts. How about opening a cafe called Easy Coffee? Here's the concept: no tax and a simply priced menu, but a nice, friendly, comfy place with a good personality. Does a cafe have a personality? Of course it does. Easy Coffee will have a $1 to go menu: small coffee, your coffee (your cup), small juice, simple snacks such as bagels and peanut butter sandwiches and cookies and mini-brownies. Easy Coffee will also have a $2 menu (coffees, some foods), a $3 menu (fancy coffees) and a $5 menu (protein shakes and maybe sandwiches). And that's it! Easy Coffee. I'd go there. Easy Coffee! It's easy! Or .. Easy Coffee! No Change! No Tax! Good Stuff!

How about a movie? A green card marriage: a guy receives money to marry a girl so she can get citizenship. They go through the interviews and red tape. But they fall in love. Why not? It's an intense experience that they go through together. The immigration interviewer doesn't believe them. The more the marriage is questioned, and the more the couple defends it, the more it seems real. But now they have a problem: they're already married, but they want to do it for real. But they can't divorce for three years. So they wait. They get divorced. And then they really tie the knot.