Tea and Cigarettes

The air bites chilly and rigid. Smells are loose and dry of smog. The streets are desolate and populated by the migrant taxi returning from a downtown trip. Yellow zips by on the tarmac screeching with no reason for stopping here. Their is a static grey growing and billowing in a low ceiling above the earth, and the earth continues to rotate.

"I think I could use a dog in my life."
"What kind of dog, do you think?"
"You, know I'm not sure; Something big. I'm not into that little dog shit"

Vagrants once dragged their lives around this area of town. With them, they carried their dense polluted air and shared with one another the one size fits all brown paper bag that made for a relief for the vomit to follow after the Hennessy. The world has grown older and wiser and shoved these forgotten peoples out. Now painted and coined everywhere is the term "SOHO this" and "Something of SOHO."

"Relationships are hard."
"I wish I was gay."
"I think if I end up alone, I'll just adopt."
"So you won't be alone?"
"No, I'll still be alone, but at least I'll have something to occupy my time."
"But, don't you have a pretty damn all-time-inclusive job. Wait, I understand."

Hard times are soon to come not only for this place but for its people. People will turn on each other, not in the way they do now, as subversive planters of pain, but in the future it will be in full view of reality. Dogmas for the whole will no longer rule, but ideologues will be born in all, and fire will cleanse the impure. In an ideal world, that is.

"What do you think of that picture."
"It seems very reclusive and dreary."
"My tea is amazing. And look at the china that it's provided in. Fuck me, how ostentatious can I sound."
"If the shoe fits."
"Fuck you."
"Hey you said it first."

The rain doesn't fall today. The sky only teases the earth with the bust line ever increasing but never totally torn away to reveal what ecstasy could look like. The soon to be desolate branches praise the gods and ask for rain to wash away the loss of yesterday's joy. Soon the orange and red will be speckled along street gutters and found in bags marked "to be burned."

"I need to quit smoking."
"When did you start?"
"I think I was around fourteen."
"For me, it was thirteen."
"I think I fell prey to the magazines and the television."
"Well don't forget your friends."
"Yeah that too."
"I can't seem to break the habit. And not the daily pack habit; but the cyclical habit of quitting and starting. I think if I just committed to one or another, I would be better off."
"Labels make life a little easier: Smoker or non-smoker. None of this in the middle shit."

The room is cavernous with little occupying it's floor space and ceilings that are dark and black without the discernibility of it's breadth. It is ever expanding. Bricks climb from the floor to the heavens. The door continually creaks open and then closed. The glass on the door becomes a bit more smudged from oily fingers. The music pervades the air and seems to be Bhangra.

"I love this place, and I mean not just this cafe."
"You know, it has its moments. Some days are amazing, and others, not so much."
"It's as ephemeral as a cigarrete."
"Yes it is."


Be Relentless,
Peace
Remoy