Morning Café

by Joseph Grant

Words are not born on an empty stomach, he sleepily thought as walked along the rough, terra cotta colored floor tiles and sat down at a small table at the café, in as much as they are not inspired by booze. Oh, one could have a fleeting moment of bottled and usually subsequent mottled inspiration, but in the headachy aftermath of a night thought well-spent at the bar instead of at the writing desk, more often than not, the blessed words that came from up on high were usually as confusing a choice as the cursed hideous creature you brought home with you from down low the night before. His eyes scanned the menu written in white chalk on the board behind the copper-hewn bar and he ordered a fritada to allay the rumbling in his stomach and he began to write and since he had not hit the bars or the clubs, the words flowed easily and without wrestling for metaphor or deeper meaning and he wrote that way for a long time uninterrupted. He absolutely loved getting up very early and writing at the café while the rest of the world slept and he believed the words came more freely when he roused himself and shook off the dreams from the long corridors of sleep. To him, writing like this as he had back in New York at the morning cafés in what seemed now several lifetimes ago, was the only way to spend a Saturday morning in Los Angeles or hell, any morning, anywhere for that matter. As he sat near the window to catch the opening sonata of sunlight upon his notebook, Claire and Rose brought over his fritada and latte one right after the other and he sat and wrote happily and assuredly, consuming the breakfast as the words consumed the page and just beyond that window glass other stories were already transpiring and if he was lucky, he would write about them with a clear and sharp perception, not dulled by alcohol, age or emotion, all in due time, he told himself, all in due time.

6S

Joseph Grant, whose full catalog is here, is the first featured author in our "Six Sixes" series.