Coffee-Shop Blues

Last weekend I was here, forcing myself to read a paperback novel about hell. Today, in an attempt to distract myself from my perennial lack of company, I decided to escape from the rest of the world by staying in a mall. Yes, it’s true that we can sometimes be alone in a crowded place and think more clearly where there is noise. The steady drone of people’s voices and their occasional ripples of laughter make an effective music for meditation, though meditation isn’t exactly what I’m doing now. I’m escaping. I’m running away. I’m hiding from the rest of the world, from all the noise and trivialities of daily existence. In a mall. Yes, this is such the perfect place to hide – in a place with bright lights and happy people while I’m sitting alone in a corner sipping coffee, pretending to be aloof and without care for company. Well, what else is new? This isn’t really much of a surprise, isn’t it?

Tonight I’m in this swanky coffee shop in downtown GenSan, wasting money on a tad too expensive vanilla latte, trying to squeeze my desiccated brain for words and ideas that have persistently eluded me for so long and assemble them into a fairly decent and reasonably interesting article for my blog.  It’s been months since I wrote one. And the last one I wrote was about loneliness and singlehood and getting old – boring and clichéd material. However, considering that my 34^th birthday is just around the corner and whether I like it or not, loneliness is staring me right in the face and even giving me a dirty finger taunting me like a bully, it looks like I will be discussing the same nasty but boring topics yet again.

Well, maybe if I keep on staying here, every Saturday night and every Tuesday night, at right about the same time, in right about the same corner, maybe some nerdy solitude-seeking man will bother to sit with me and join me for a while.  Maybe. Who knows? Stuff from movies do happen in real life, albeit very rarely. Like that line from that coffee commercial. Let’s sit and talk awhile. All that crap. Maybe that could still happen if I stick around this place long enough.

I’ve stuck around long enough. Or maybe not yet. How long am I supposed to wait?  I’m not a very patient woman. Or maybe I’m a very patient woman, but I’ve been patient long enough.

Stop. There I go again. I'm again rambling about loneliness and singlehood and getting old. It's boring. I'm boring. I should stop and smell the coffee.