The shop owner has a sense of sad calm. A regular customer says thankyou, they will meet sometime. This shop is changing hands. It has been here some time; worn timber, walls of coffee and tea, tables standing on massive raw eucalypt with high gloss tea chest tops, ink stamped facets under amber resin.
I buy a coffee and sit down. The table is called Jamaica. There are people sitting at Yunnan, China, and a long continent down the back. I should be sitting there. I came for the meetup, but there are no familiar faces. I have a book, perhaps if I wait.
I am reading Ursula Le Guin's Always coming home. Short stories and poems from a world with different patterns and culture. The stories and experiences are raw and universal. Following paths made by many pre-industrial communities. I wonder how she can write like this and still be a copyright maximalist. Writing of collective knowledge, of patterns of bonding for communities spaces and species, and then stamping it as private property. I would like her to meet John Clare.
Half listening to the quick banter of the twitter crowd. A word or two reaches me, but mostly its just the tone and tempo. The hum of the conversation. They are young, black clad and champing at the edges.
I am using my fingers to step the metre of poems, to keep focused on the book, in this other world of earth and journeys.