Coffee Shops and Prayer Flags.

I sat in the corner of the coffee shop with big yarn. I have some big green yarn, and I started making loops and chains. I leaned back, crooked my head to the side to stretch, and I scooted forward on my chair. I took a drink from my warm and unnecessary coffee. I slouched again and began making loops and chains. The Pixies played in the background, and I wondered how the other people here weren't at a bar instead. The sun was long-since set. The sun was a memory. It was 9:40pm, and this place would be closed in twenty minutes. I stretched out my arm further than my coffee mug to stretch another muscle. I stretched out my legs and locked my kneecaps. I started making loops and chains with a 5.5mm crochet hook. Big green yarn. Tan coffee. Did these other people quit drinking too? Why aren't these people drunk? It's perverse.

It's 9:45pm and the temperature of my coffee is plummeting. I'm sitting on a wooden chair overhearing the words of others like the buzz from a distant table saw. I answer my phone and tell Dave where the coffee shop is.

Dave sits across from me, and he's not wearing a smile. He gets a coffee and we sit silently. Nobody needs this coffee, and that is my thought as he drops a fat black notebook onto the table. I sip cold coffee. I start making loops and chains.

Me and Dave head to my place where the lighting and music and atmosphere are under control. He mentions weed about three times, and that sets me to smoking a little bit.

I have a string of three Tibetan prayer flags that I found in the middle of Main Street in Newark Delaware. There should be a fourth flag, but the yellow one was torn out. Now there is a gap. As Dave and I talk about how good or not life is, I pick up a finished square of orange crochet. As we discuss the merits of life and dating and friends, I use bits of yarn to affix the orange replacement flag in the gap left by the missing yellow flag.

Dave takes the captain's chair and begins selecting music. His selections are fed through stiff little wires to my tall wooden JBLs. I sit on the bed and look at my skein of dead-grass yarn. I pick up a pretty pink instead, and begin a new chain. I hold my work up to one of the Tibetan prayer flags and chain out a length to match the bottom of the flag. I start working backwards, and soon I am flipping my work and making a bright pink flag.