day 18

Day 18                        Lounge at a coffee shop

Wednesday March 16 2011

If I could be most relaxed on a trip, I would spend hours in a coffee hsop, reading and writing.  When you sit in a coffee shop in any city, you get a feel for the people: who frequents the store, who are regulars, what is their pace of life?  The music played can be soothing and enticing, as you people watch, eavesdrop, and write.  This is a time during your trip, where you can actually sit and relax.  Nobody in the store is rushing you to leave in a rush, asking if you need anything else.  If you come into a coffee shop, it is almost expected you will be there for sometime.  Generally coffee shops are air conditioned, if you need a break from the hot sun or heated if it’s crisp and cool outside.  Your cost is low for relaxation and temperature management, the price of a coffee.  You can look at the local map, plan your itinerary, or just rest your legs and reflect. 

I have not even gotten to the drinks.  Hot or cold.  They serve as energy boosts or lengthy comfort.  Coffee is like a massage for my tongue and my body, which goes limp as I enter the room. 

Today is Wednesday, Midweek.  A full day filled with patients and meetings.  I ate my lunch at my desk, as I wrote notes, so I could afford time to go to the base coffee shop.  And I did everything just mentioned.  I wrote, watched, listened, planned, tasted, rested, and dreamed.  Frank Sinatra’s soothing voice served as a perfect compliment to my caffeine fix.  I drink my coffee slow, it lasted throughout the next meeting, and the day.  It is as if I want to preserve the experience of coffee.  Carry that languid time with me.  I watch all the young military mothers with their newborns and feel I am briefly a tourist in their world.  The crowd ebbs and flows as lunch approaches.

This served as a much needed break from listening to war traumas of death, murder, suicide, occupational power struggles.  And for a moment I just listen to Frank and experience the slurps of coffee in my mouth.  The brown leather chair serves as my rocking chair, for a moment my id tag is off my neck.  This usually feels as if an albatross is being carried around my neck, a noose serving as a reminder “you are at work.”  But for a moment it is off and I feel free.