Aujourd'hui Il Pleut

Today it is raining; the kind of grey, cold rain that keeps people indoors, cozied up on the couch with a good book and some hot chocolate. But, I am not one of these people. I see rain and I want to go out. I feel trapped, desperate, unable to accomplish anything in my own four walls that I call an apartment. On days like these, the apartment gets much smaller, much more cluttered with small things to do, and I can do none of them.

I awoke at 7:30am and immediately opened my shades to watch the tiny droplets of water sprinkle on the rooftops below my window. I watched as people scurry around with grand, large umbrellas to keep them dry. I proceed to scrounge the “world wide web” or the “internets” as our friend George W calls it (um there is ONE internet buddy, just ONE, no “S”) for a way to move to France, what papers do I need, how am I going to get a job, how can I escape this place? Finally, I tire of lying down, tire of typing on my lap. You know what I long for the most on days like these? On these grey, cold days trapped in my apartment, I long for a kitchen table; a large one where you can spread out your things and not clean them up, where you can make stacks and stacks of things to do and accomplish them one by one, where you can eat and write and keep your stacks all at the same time, where you can stare out the window for minutes on end at the rain coming down, comforted by the warmth from inside your house. I long for that. A table. A kitchen table says to me that you have a home and that it’s a real home. Instead I find myself suiting up for a rainy day quest to find “a table,” a place where I can spread out my stuff and think.

I head up the street to my favorite “plain old good food” establishment, 7A. Always the best food there, mediocre service and endless chatter, it’s so loud that you can do nothing but climb inside your head and think. It’s the kind of static noise that forces you to focus in and really THINK. I never understood that till recently. It’s too quiet to think people would say. It didn’t make sense to me. If it’s quiet then you have nothing to do but think. No, you have EVERYTHING to do but think, you can wait for the next sound, you can wonder what that intermittent clicking is, when it’s so noisy that you can’t distinguish one noise from the next then you have nothing to do but focus in and get your shit done.

Upon my arrival I find that everyone else had my same idea, they were all searching for a place to get out. Since when are New Yorkers early birds? Its only 11:15am, shouldn’t they be lying with their head in a toilet after a night of debaucher like all normal people? I install myself at the bar, but, a bar is not, in fact, a table. I eat my ham and cheese omelet surrounded by noise, pay the bartender and continue my quest for “a table.”

Next stop Café Pick Me Up, they have there very nice table, a good ambiance for getting things done, windows where I can see the rain and COOKIES! Also very good for getting things done. (We won’t discuss my need for a diet till tomorrow; lord knows you can’t start a diet on a SUNDAY!!) My quest seems futile at this point. All the tables are taken, is it impossible in this city to find a damn table? At this rate it would be easier to find a BOYFRIEND than a table. Alors, I must move on.

Finally my last ditch effort, Alt Coffee, a vegan coffee house that doesn’t have cookies, isn’t warm cause they leave the door open AND smells of wet dog, wait that’s me, the fur on the hood of my coat is wet. But, they do in fact have a few tables and I manage to snag a seat at a communal table where I am now sitting across from a young, blemished, red head that seems to be working on a term paper. Oh to be young again.

So, I found a table and I am writing, but I am somehow disappointed. Kind of like bad sex with a really hot guy; you think that you finally found what you were looking for but somehow it wasn’t as good as you expected.