thank you for not sharing

In January 2017, Dammit Dave and I hit the road north. On a Saturday morning, we threaded our way through the needle's eye of potential lake-effect whiteouts, landing in Kingston, Ontario, for lunch. Why not? On the night before, I floated the concept as a small clutch of friends yucked it up. I liked the notion for its brazen spontaneity, shock value, and merry foolishness. Dammit Dave was up for it. So was I. On the ride up, we talked ceaselessly about our personal histories, buffered with a few cross-currents of editorial comment. I wouldn't say we delved into our fears; after all, we're men.

We had lunch at Curry Original. Very fine food with a view of Lake Ontario outside our window.

For dessert, we repaired to Balzac's Kingston on Princess Street. Coffee and pastries.

A sign said: "Table sharing is kindly encouraged. #makeanewfriend #communaltables"

Dammit Dave and I found a spot near the back, a table to ourselves. I was tired. I was ready to head back to Syracuse. If the coffee did its job, we'd be alert enough for driving back.

Table sharing.

It depends.

I wasn't in the mood for it, though often I don't mind. Many coffee shops depend on such a code of occupancy; they need to keep the place filled. They need to sell products. Otherwise, there'd be no business, no tables to share, no seats to sit on.

There's a time and a place for communal space.

This wasn't it for me, not quite, though, being a social animal, I traded remarks here and there with Canadian strangers, if only to ask about the location of the restrooms.

When I worked in New York in the Eighties, it was not uncommon for me, or intimates of mine, to engage in deeply personal conversations over lunch, at a restaurant, a cafe, a cafeteria, a food court, or a pocket park. New York conferred an automatic shield of anonymity and resulting privacy. It was like the cone of silence on "Get Smart." The people at the nearby table (sometimes at a shared table) could be talking about bestiality or beatific visions. No matter. Zone it out. Not my business.

That was then. Perhaps in a "hear something, say something" world, things have changed.

I've observed that privacy protection via anonymity is harder to come by in a small town or a modest-sized city. They listen in, pause before the fork hits the mouth. Or maybe that's my bias untested by the evidence of ample experience.

And cultural factors are at play, too.

Dammit Dave and I swapped no secrets, revealed no scandals that Saturday....unless he reads this and corrects my subjectively skewed memory.

Honoré de Balzac would have been disappointed in our conversational blandness as blank and small as a finished espresso.

innocence and victimhood

The person to my right at the coffee shop has on her left a book titled Innocence and Victimhood. On the spine I see the words "critical human rights." It looks like a textbook. Innocence. Victimhood. I can't claim to have written the definitive text on either, though the latter would seem my specialty more than the former. That self-judgment may be a tad harsh. Does it victimize me? And my personal innocence was lost a long time ago, and I seem to recall it most in my grandson's eyes, though that is a naive and sentimental view, is it not? What is innocence? What is victimhood? Are they merely personal traits (attributes, states, concepts) or more broadly incarnate (corporate, national, global)? I know not. Which is more appealing? (That is a facile question; or maybe not, on closer scrutiny.) And beyond words as words, and notions as notions (as our Buddhist friends like to note), what are these matters, after all?

voices

Kava Cafe, or is it Cafe Kava, is buzzing with voices, young and old, male and female, mostly Caucasian but perhaps more mixed than you'd expect. Speaking of the Caucasus Mountains, most of the voices are Ukrainian, with aural patches of English and music that might be Ukrainian. The hum and wave and rhythm of voices. The throb of commerce. Saturday morning. November.

coffee and . . .

When I was a child, I heard my mother refer to some friends getting together for "coffee and...."

I think this is a New York City-area expression.

I hated it when I first heard it. My young child's very direct mind demanded resolution and completeness. I wanted the phrase to complete itself, subject and predicate, or at least noun and noun to complete a noun phrase.

"Coffee and what, Mom?"

"Coffee and whatever. Cheese danish. Bagel. Anything."

"So why don't they just say that?"

"I don't know."

As one who spends many of his working hours at local coffeehouses, such as Freedom of Espresso, on Solar Street in Syracuse (and sometimes on Pearl Street or less frequently in Fayetteville), I now understand a little bit about "coffee and...."

For me, the "and" isn't just pastries, though Freedom of Espresso's rugula with cinnamon are my favorites. The "and" involves community, wi-fi connection, networking, atmosphere, ambiance, human connection, aroma, chatter, townsquareneity, solitude, neighborhood, potential, mood, context.

A New York Times article about Bread Stuy, a coffeehouse in Brooklyn, offers two relevant comments.

"A coffee shop like Bread-Stuy offers a space where that [a sense of community] can quote-unquote brew," says Jonathan Landau.

And Mark Pendergrast, author of "Uncommon Grounds," a history of coffee, speaks of "solitude in company" to describe a coffeehouse's public space that allows sharing and community in ways similar to the tavern of old or the soda fountain of the 1950s.

"Human beings are social creatures, and we've become less and less social," said Pendergrast. "We spend more and more time in front of our computers or our televisions, and we go to our work and we come home."

I for one sometimes work, typically with my laptop, at a coffeehouse. At least for part of the day, to leave my home office, "to blow the stink off," to use another of my mother's expressions. At a coffeehouse, I can enjoy both solitude as well as company.

And if I were in Quincy, Massachusetts, or Braintree, Massachusetts, I'd surely be a regular at the Coffee Break Cafe. I say that even though I've yet to taste their fine coffee. I can declare this loyalty because I've already received their fine hospitality, on behalf of my brother. They get it.

The coffee at a coffeehouse (more often tea for me) and the pastries are just part of it.

Works for me.