Pine Morning Notes

At the swank local Helvetica-fonted bakery with attitude, I was having coffee, alone, just now. You know the kind of place - exquisite, poised, hardwood floors, New York Times. Hipster cakes and croissants all lined up under a bank of glass. You know this place. Like, I tried to tip the barista a couple quarters. "We don't take tips," he said, and paused before adding "we get paid enough." Cool.

At my table, drinking my coffee and making a few notes about the day before me, sunlight fell across my lap. Good feelings. At the table to my left, there was a young English-as-a-second-language instructor (blond, late twenties, & tired-looking) and an old Chinese man. The old man's English was bad, but he was trying. I kept overhearing their strange conversation...

"Raptors are birds of prey. Raptors are birds of prey."
She wanted him to repeat it.
Bent to my notes, I tried tuning them out, but couldn't.
"CURVED BEAK. CURVED BEAK."

It occurred to me that, in this cafe, Ella Fitgerald is always being played. (Or Gilberto or Brubeck or other 1950's "Cool" jazzers that now live in ubiquitous posterity in America's bakery-cafes.) Yeah...but then, underneath "Mack The Knife," I heard - what's that? Is it? Yes... Journey. "Don't stop. Be-liev-in'..." It was on the radio back in the kitchen, where I could spy a pastry chef who looked like she was born & raised in a French bakery and early-on initiated into the mystery cult of the lemon tart. Blond. Braids. Black hornrims. The existentialist baker with the pert lilt, and she was headbanging now because that second pre-chorus was really kicking in, espresso too.

Oh yeah, and Ella and her fellas were really making a wreck of "Mack The Knife" and look at that: my notes were all done, like magic. The table to my left was now having a new weird conversation fractured as the age in which we all dwell. And in fact the very last thing I heard before I cut out is the teacher telling her old student, "In this country, you can be a mediocre banker and still make a lot of money. But if you are a mediocre artist you will die of starvation." Old man looked up at me and a thousand Chinese angels flew out of my eyes and into his. Then my shades came down and so did the day.