July 17

Like kids getting into the back seat of a car. Where are we going, as we head out the door and down the walk?

Same direction as before, but this time to have a breakfast sandwich and then down to the farmer's market. Goat cheese in olive oil and herbs follows us back home, after our stop at the cafe for an iced coffee and to write.

Writing with the sounds of the over-head fans, the loud mother and chatty child sitting next to us, us trying to hear our own thoughts, with the din of coffee cups clanking, the espresso machine going, the “ORDER UP” shouts from the kitchen, and now the story being read one table over, over all these other sounds.

But when you can look up and see the face of your beloved writing through the all of this, then you can continue on, knowing it can be done.

This morning we both watched a video on Maria Kalman, with her wonderful perspective on people, places, and situations. It helps.

When you are so inside the inside world, the outside world becomes very perplexing, foreign to a large extent, a caricature of life. A cartoon of various boxes filled with people zooming in and out of frame, the crash, boom, bang of wars, the swish, slide, sizzle of car tires going down the road. It's all there.

And we're there, too. Odd as it seems to us sometimes, we're there too, in the middle of all this stuff the world owns. Earth is the world's storage place. You cannot count all the trees, the number of sand grains, the miles it would take to walk the entire earth's surface, if anyone would even want to do such a thing.

Our day is turning out to be inside the outside of this world, and we are relieved that the sounds are changing, now there's jazz playing, the story at the next table has ended and the table is empty, the espresso machine isn't steaming up another cup at the moment, we can hear ourselves talking to each other, reading to each other, the Bennie Goodman playing in the background.

The cool air in the cafe is calming the energy and people are looking like they are just being themselves.