Foiled at the Barnes & Noble

Last night I felt like writing in a different place. This happens often, but there are surprisingly few good places to go write. I complain about this often, in fact; I'm sure there's an old post somwhere back there whining about the same thing.

I don't belive in dribing to a coffee shop. The only three within walking distance are Starbucks, Starbucks, and Starbucks. I like the Starbucks in the Barnes & Noble best, perhaps because being around hundreds of best-selling books is somewhat inspiring.

So last night I packed up my under-used laptop and strolled over to the huge new shopping plaza that I seem to spend so much time at. It's only a few blocks away. The sky was an electric cobalt, the color it get right before it's truly dark and eveningtime. I take the back neighborhood streets that Joe and I walk down at least four or five times a week. I see those tiny houses over and over again, but every time I notice a few tiny new things about them--the way flowers are arranged in a planter, the way a whirlygig hanging from the eve of a patio moves in the breeze, the mewing of a cat who eats cat food dumped on the same soild, greasy patch of sidewalk.

Then I got to the bookstore. Before ordering coffee I browsed (Bitch magazine, which I think I may have an article in the next issue if they haven't axed it already, Jonathan Safran Foer's new book; I'm smitten with the author but only mildly inerested in his actual writing). This is why Barnes & Noble is dangerous. But I like its sameness from store to store, and I like the sameness of the music they play at the same nearly ignorable volume, just a few decibles louder than airport Muzak. This may sound gross, but I feel like I can be a writer there. It's so generic that it's easier to grasp onto extraordinary thoughts.

I never did get my coffee. Every cafe table, every grouping of benches, every lounge chair--they were all taken. Writing, for me, is (unglamorously) like a bowle movement. When it's happening it's happening and that's all there is to it.

So I didn't want to hand out and browse more while waiting for a table. I'd left home so I could concentrate and not dick off; what was the point in dicking off more now that I was there? I split, not having purcased a tall americano or Bitch magazine or Extremely Lound and Incredibly Close (not only does Jonathan Safran Foer actually write and have books and stuff--he probably types and spells way better than I do).

At home, I let the laptop run on its battery from the kitchen table, a very minor change of scenery that was slighly fruitful nevertheless. Joe watched Cheers and we both ate the last two slices of butterscotch pie, which by then had lost much of its initial creamy-sweet appeal. Joe ate his pie and laughed, I ate my pie and wrote and read. Then I closed up the laptop and wathced Cheers, too.