Three of us sat idle in our familiar booth this morning. The conversation, however, was anything but lethargic. It moved about, weaving among pillars of ideas embossed with individual views of politics, relationships, entertainment personalities, friends, and food choices. The variety of topics inside this imaginary, echoed vestibule – where my chummy pack of commoners meet almost every morning – are always subject to debate and, as well, never fully caught in grasps of resolution. Therefore, tomorrow meetings are always an understood must in order to continue weaving among the pillars.
We are three of a larger group that would require a bigger booth if all arrived on any given morning. My best guess is around fifteen, counting spouses who would be brave enough to actually show up and admit owning the deed to the one claiming such. Any concoction of us would blend in among a crowd of bald, short, tall, well-dressed, old, rich, poor, colorful, mouthy, meek, humorous, smart, and/or non compos mentis plebeians in any cafe, Anywhere, USA. Fortunately for them, I am a blogger. I glean interesting insights into the differences between us, as a group, and other batches of bloviating booth mates. Unfortunately for my great goons, I HAVE to write about them once in a while because they are weird … each one of them individually, and wholly as a tribe. I define this small mass of humanity as my loving and caring goofball chat mates who sit idle almost every morning with me, but can’t shut up long enough to understand the wisdom churning in my ever spinning brain.
Today, two of them sat with me and I with them.
The challenge lies in not naming them by name on the outside chance they read this. No specific descriptors are permissible by my own standards because of the risk inherent. I shall, therefore, call out Thor, the first of the two gods of the obvious. In using gods of Greek mythology, I avoid any conflict therein and also bring into question my own beguiling sense of irony. For in doing so, I am challenging myself to square-peg-round-hole my words through the side pains of high intensity laughter.
Thor asked, “What is a blog?”. A fair question asked fifteen minutes into the morning. Strange to never have been asked previously as we almost always talk about my writing while munching over unbuttered toast, eggs, scrapple, medium bacon, fried potatoes, or pancakes. This subject came up after discussing Vanna White’s net worth and my recent indiscretion involving a certain dog at a local salon. Well, it wasn’t really the dog’s fault as much as was mine, to be honest, …
Anyway, my response was the usual, “Oh, a blog is, ….” …” and, “the blogosphere is where..” .. ” Oh, and if you go to my site, like I’ve suggested you do, it’s a portal to possibilities where you can experience all my blogs by dropping down the menus ….” See where I’m going with this? … and where Thor didn’t go?
He sat there patiently caressing his hammer, most likely wanting to smack me across my thunder mouth. A simple question with a four letter word: B-L-O-G. I rearranged his world by resorting to a retort of glob – a mashup of words resembling what could best be described as mumblefarts. I not-so-quickly recognized my error, reset my tongue, and began again:
“As a blogger, I own a planet-blog where I live by myself … writing every day or so. My planet-blog, named Doughugs, floats around with many, many other planet-blogs occupied and owned by other writers. The space in which we float around together is a universe. This very large universe is the blogosphere. Readers get on spaceships and visit as many planets as they want and don’t have to live on any planets. Subscribers can get an alert on their spaceship when a planeteer writes a new story, so the pilot can head over there if they want to. There are 600 million planets with at least 31 million actively writing one post each month, so our space friends could be very, very busy traveling if they so desire.”
Thor understood from that point forward, although I knew the chances were slim-to-none he would ever get his generational-gap ship off the internet launch pad. That’s ok. I’m glad he asked. Usually I pepper him with the occasional tart-teaser from one of my recent blogs, wetting his appetite for a snarky, sarcastic volley in return from his bag of comments. Replies, for the record, he’s very adept at – usually sizzling them across the bacon awaiting its own tongue lashing on my plate.
Sitting to my right was Alectrona, goddess of the morning. She is just as much a regular as Thor … and I guarantee the word “regular” based on the amount of black poison she drinks before 9 a.m. . I’m entitled to the phrase, “black poison”, by shear logic. I am alive due to having never, ever allowed one drop of the stuff to approach, touch, or breach my labium superius oris. If then, so. Si igitur ita.
Alectrona contributes well, post-topically, to our morning word commute. Once an idea is proposed for discussion, she delightfully interjects a this-and-that with a nudge of interplay to keep the wheels of words turning. All the while strongly suggesting a refill from any waitress, customer, biologist, taxi driver, astronaut, Nascar driver, or Yeti who may or may not be passing by holding a carafe of caffeinated, highly toxic liquid. As I type and ponder, she may be the only female regular of the group. Two words I never realized and can type only in that order because “regular female” doesn’t apply.
No normal, sane girl-type would spend time with us guys. Why, then does she do it? My immediate answer is, “Why, because there are fourteen guys … of course!”… but, I’ve known Alectrona a long time and that’s just not the case. She had some bad luck in her life. More than most. I think, kinda know, she could use some good news every day. If that means hanging out with some crazy guys a few minutes in the morning talking about silly, inane letter turners who make millions, or dog problems in hair salons, well, that’s more than o.k. .. that’s fantastic.
We were anything but the Bermuda triangle of words this morning. Thor, Alectrona, and I. Three idyllic, idle sitters in a booth – weaving conversation around pillars of ideas. Many more schemes and proposals than outlined above, to be sure, as well as mugs of coffee poured (in front of others … still uck for me) found their way to innumerable joy-filled worlds. It was a scene sure to be repeated many times over in the future with other gods to be named because tomorrow meetings are always an understood must. For today, just two friends and I engaged in cafe conversations. It was nice. As always.
DougHugs 