Character-driven

Speaking in incomplete sentences. The weather is definitely changing. Joints ache in anticipation of rain, but practice is the best medicine.

Who goes to Caribou on Saturday? The new barista is doing the best he can, but he doesn't know a cranberry scone from a black raspberry. And what's up with all the loud, animated conversations. Is it me? Or course it is, why else would everyone around me be unattractive and obnoxious and stupid? The West Side is its own little freakshow, but so is uptown Clintonville, and Westerville, home base of the strongman Colonel Qaddasich, don't even get me started.

People should wear uniforms with colorful insignias - stripes, stars, bars, oakleaf clusters, crossed fasces, swords, pentacles, rods, cups - indicating their tribe, rank, level of education, political orientation, astrological sign, religious affiliation, dosha. It would be so much more efficient than the random, rootless, free-market fashion statements of name-brand apparel and the inevitable unsuccessful attempts at upward mobility by wearing the knock-off uniform of the tribe/rank/credit rating sought but not achieved.

The checklist, written or unwritten, on paper or digital file, acknowledged or tacit, functions as a personal measure of accomplishment and simultaneously as an autotelic artwork, checking off items as an end in itself, tracking is its own reward. Birds seeking seeds, bark breaking down from a hard life as cells protecting living plant tissue to become in the next life a footpath across a garden, eventually becoming soil itself, and back up the food chain to reconstitute as plant cells again of some other species.

Plot-driven. There was a reason for the confusion between cranberry and black raspberry, involving white chocolate chips, three bicyclists talking with a mail carrier, and a woman waiting outside the bank, looking up the street, and pulling a book from her black bag. A fire truck goes by, then another. The loud talk subsides, as if the whole point of the conversation was to finish it.

A couple comes in, young woman leading young man with confidence, orders drinks and sits down, her jeans more flamboyantly worn than his, his smile more reserved, almost dour, but behind his youthful haircut a calm awareness that he is going where she is going. Even after he cracks a slight smile, he talks behind his hand like a pitcher to the catcher to guard against stolen signs. Somatotype, attitude, and body language as cultural artifacts, signs seeking a common denominator in the indefinitely recurring language game of ratings and rankings in a narrative of ordinary discourse by natural selection.

Guy walks into a bar. Name of the bar is Phenomenal Cafe, and his immediate reaction is to like the place. He stands inside the door just a moment to check it out, and when a chorus of other people's heads turn he self-consciously continues walking, thinking about what he will order: "Coffee, dark-roast, large, slice of herb bread, toasted, butter." He pays and sits down at a table farthest from the counter where the distracted barista is getting his order. The main thing is to keep moving.

There are two kinds of people in the world. The disheveled employee brings a steaming ceramic cup and a small plate. Those who report on the state of their lives, sometimes in the first-person and sometimes in the second but usually in the third-person, and by the second sentence you know enough to not believe a word of it, because the content of the story is effectively masking how they really think and feel. This line of discourse is their way of deflecting attention, misdirecting intention, putting up a facade of believability.

Then there are those who would rather die than report on the state of their lives, which would be too hard, too soul-crushingly revealing, too self-absorbed in its implicit attention-seeking and too depressing to admit openly what and who they really are. By the extreme neutrality, general niceness, and businesslike discretion posing as polite decorum, you can tell there is no one home and nothing to talk about, so why even knock on the door.