Thursday, Day One.

(Written on January 7, 2010)

I've begun reading my first self help book on re-birthing my writing. Sitting in my favorite little nook at the coffee shop, I had initially set the book to my left, writing pad to my right, and after endless minutes digging deep into my slouchy sunken purse, realized I'd forgotten my most important component. Distraught, I eyed the business casual man sitting directly in front of me, who was coincidentally enough, fumbling through his over-sized, gray shoulder bag.
"Excuse me," I asked, using a rather discerning tone. "Do you have a pen or pencil?"
He rummaged a bit more. "No, but I need to go put money in my parking meter, and surely there is one in my car."
"As long as it isn't any trouble..." I began, but he was quick to puncture my sentence. "Not at all." Cue the toothy smile.
I sipped my coffee while his footsteps clunked in the direction of the door, the hollow floors reverberating through the corridor.
While mystery man raced in hot pursuit against time, attempting to avoid the potential nuisance of a costly paper underneath his windshield wiper, I flipped through pages of a local paper to read my horoscope, and while normally perused in a flash with a sigh, this one grabbed me, shaking me menacingly. (Or maybe it stroked me tenderly.)
I looked up in anticipation of a writing utensil; this list screamed to be chronicled for later use; revisited with rosy retrospection.
"Good thing I made it out there so soon," he said, a sound of relief in his voice. "As I reached my car, others down the line were being ticketed." Then, extending his hand to mine, I carefully eased a hotel pen from his fingertips. "Close call huh?" I asked, not expecting an answer, following it up with mild mannered guffaw. "Thank you."
There was a deep-seated haste within me to scribble down the words as fast as I could. In what could be the worst penmanship to date, I wrote the list, introspectively connecting each 'approach' with something I'd already done, or what was to be:

"Five Revolutionized Approaches To the Art Of Rebellion: cultivate these within the coming weeks.

1. Experimenting with uppity, mischievous optimism
2. Invoking insurrectionary levels of wildly interesting generosity
3. Indulging in an insolent refusal to be chronically fearful
4. Pursuing a cheeky ambition to be as wide awake as a dissident young messiah
5. Bringing reckless levels of creative intelligence to all expressions of love."

Reading each one, pertinent, correlated events cropped up like crabgrass, in my mind. Storing it away in the depths of my bag, I re-focused on my book. 60 pages later, I left.


Revisiting the stoop of speculation, I jotted verisimilar mental notes on whatever caught my attention (the Jack Nicholson lookalike, the gaunt, petite smoker with legs so frail and skinny they could easily be snapped like a wishbone) all the while thinking to myself, "always been a firebolt... constantly provoking, instigating, questioning......"

Something had interrupted my train of thought. Looking over, a little toddler in a neon green jacket and winter hat adorned with bear ears sat down next to me. "Hi!" she said, looking deeply into my eyes; mine into hers. As her dad stood on the curb close-by, he watched as his daughter Madeline and I made disjointed conversation. Mentioning her bear hat, she touched the furry ears with her tiny hands, wiggling them at me. After exchanging a polite little handshake with such tiny little fingers, we said our byes, and as her father carried her away, she stared back at me, waving and saying "Bye!"

And then, I sat alone again, automatically back in my mind, correlating it with a similar event back in the summer when a little girl was more interested in me then getting ice cream, sitting on a stoop with me outside the farmers market.

And it hit me, something I've reasoned before but hadn't put into words, till now: I have the power to provoke, without provoking.