the eyes have it

you can feel the metallic cold boring in on you

or the sportive romping with Amaryllis in the shade

molten rage

dull resolve

sadness unto death

it's all in the eyes isn't

it dancing or drowning

flying or flat

the eyes have it

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.

snow what?

...and what would The Darwin Finches chirp about Snowmageddon?

What would Kierkegaard say?

Snowmageddon

Now that we've seen the term "Snowmageddon" for the snowstorm hitting the likes of Maryland, Virginia, DC, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey (am I missing anyone?), what next?

Snowcalypse Now?

snowcalypso? [the steady rhythm of apocalyptic snows]

snowschatology?

snowkarma?

snowincarnation?

And why or how is it that the term "Snowmageddon" has not been applied to a snowstorm heretofore?

Or has it?

aural borealis non erat

Much of blogging is verbal. Or visual. Little of it is aural, though I can't back this up by any data. But neither do I care to back this up with data. I merely care to share some of my urban aural experience, with words, not with recordings of the sounds themselves. Why? I'm a wordsmith, and I paint with words. What's it to you?

Walking on Thursday under Route 690, known as 690, in Syracuse, I walked in the cold but glinting light, backpack heavy on my shoulder, under a highway bridge. The whooshing sound of vehicular tires was almost ominous. A planetary zip, echoing under the bridge. A cosmic skid. (Is that what this life is? A cosmic skid lasting less than a second?) I wondered to myself what sound effect in a movie these tire-on-pavement-above slices of life would evoke. Intergalactic ray gun bullets? Internal thought pulses? Erotic temptations? (In all honesty, that did cross my mnd one iota, for once.) Traffic would not be the listener's first thought. I don't think so.

Then I thought of a sparklingly exuberant blind woman I know. H. smiles frequently. This is the world she encounters. She displays a visage of delight. Not that she walks under this particular bridge. Of course not. But this is her world, isn't it? Wasn't I blessed with a tiny insight into her aural borealis, her light show of sounds, her spectral wonder encountered radically from her perspective, not ours of the sighted world?

Plus, deciding to get off my high horse of pedestrian profundity, I realized that walkers like my former colleague M. walk all the time. This is their world too.

Blessings on our quotidian, pedestrian world, its mundane marvels.

Including its Latin phrases, its sentence fragments.

The Darwin Finches

Congratulations to The Darwin Finches on their first anniversary. At least I think so. Congratulations. Do the Darwin Finches' "prime movers" (or secondary prime tertiary movers) celebrate such things as anniversaries? Are such immovable feasts too anti-secular?

Carry on, ol' boy. I mean, boys.

Um, men.

Finchmen.

Quasi-finches.

Garrulous Galapagos Guys.

Whatever.

Cheers.

february haiku

eye-squinting sunblaze
locavore in Syracuse
melting lake effect