Barnes & Starbucks

I’m at the Starbucks at the Barnes & Noble. I come here about once a week now. Not because I love it, but because I don’t hate it. I appreciate its neutrality. While I was standing in line, I contemplated applying for a job here—not seriously, mind you, but just contemplated. Sort of like research. It might be kind of nice in its way, as long as it weren’t more than 15 hours a week. I’d be close to books, and I’d get to deal with customers. That’s nice…it always makes good fodder for writing.

But I kind of like dealing with customers, just regular people. I want to be of use somehow, in a tangible way. Sure, I do all kids of tangible things in a day—cook, clean-run, make crafts and junk like that—but they don’t touch any other lives except for Joe, maybe my parents and a few friends and relatives. It’s lonely. That’s why people come here to places like this, to be less lonely but, at the same time, alone. Alone in public. We all have to be forced to interact, and nothing is forcing me right now.

So when I post this, I’ll be at home. I’m not a wi-fi gal; I’m surprised I even can operate this laptop. But it’s really quite nice, like a whisper-soft portable typewriter. People could not have dropped in at a coffee shop with a portable typewriter, say, 40 years ago. You’d get laughed out of the place. But now, laptops and the like—iPods, cell phones—are all part of our social fabric. More ways to be alone in public. I write on my little laptop and use it to watch DVDs when I’m sewing. Technology isn’t bad, it’s the way we let it change our lives too much, allow it to move us further from what life is all about.

I’m going to start pretending that my Bernina is a Moog.