Coffee, before work at the fishbowl on Ward & Baker.
Sit inside, only E***** is there, the Big City Blonde, holding court with a table of older blonde ladies ranging from 30 to 50 odd, presumably she's selling her line of skincare and beauty products. She catches my eye, that glance of shared recognition and dismissal.
She's always a show but I'm not always up for it, move outside.
Reading my book, Hegel's "The Philosophy of History", I'm only just starting to get into it. I'm about halfway through.
Inside the café there's a beautiful girl looking out the window. She doesn't see me, or - more probably, isn't paying attention, slender with dark Semitic features, dark curly haired pulled up behind her head, gazing across the street with a melancholy, thoughtful air. She's looking at Shoe-La-La, no, she's looking into the beyond in that way that people do when they're distracted. She'd make a great painting - through the window reflecting the old apartments on Baker, the bus stop, blue sky and white clouds, the veils of reflections filling in her body, I surreptitiously snap a photo with my phone, how to paint this?
I'm interrupted from my own reveries by H*****, the fashionably dressed dog walker. We chat, about my book, about Yoga & Vedic Masters', he's studied in India, 5 years, about ...
Classical fluffy woo-Nelson conversations, but nothing out of the ordinary. It takes a turn, though, when he talks about the UFO's he's seen on Baker, a couple of years ago, why, even, just again last night - right there, over Pulpit rock, there were, then they opened a portal and just disappeared, our alien overlords, and it wasn't in the paper and why isn't anyone talking about this...
This is my cue, I've had my coffee, my refill, time to get to work...