Day 7: Fridays and Book Chapters.

Earlier this afternoon I sat at a round metal grate table in the courtyard of a coffee shop and, surrounded by plumes of smoke from lit cigarettes at the table next to ours, took turns squinting in the bright January sunlight to read entire chapters out of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse with my soft-spoken, silver-haired, gnarly-fingered homeless friend, Bennie. Although I normally detest being read out loud to since most people read at a slow and deliberate pace that distracts me from truly being able to forget myself in the ebb and flow of the story line, today’s reading somehow managed to transcend the normal auditory barriers and for over an hour, I was transported from the stiff chair and pungent air and constant hum of nearby traffic to a different place and era altogether… and in a gentle Texan drawl nonetheless!

You just never know what the day might hold: literary stream of conscious thought, wry puns and unexpected laughter abounds.

He was not in love, of course;
it was one of those unclassified affections of which there are so many.
– V.W.