Albuquerque is a city with no worry. Our mouths are too full of Horchata and green chile to laugh or cry about anything. There’s always an adventure, mischief, curiosity.
I leave my home when it’s time to craft new writing. Staring at empty, white walls and carpet with no color becomes weak on my eyes. I think of small cafes with minimum talking or local bookstores. I frequent two places – Flying Star and Barnes and Noble, and there I get the best of both worlds.
The mixture of burgers, mac and cheese, and old oil make me tired. I watch old people shake as they bring the fork to their mouth, completely off balance and never flinch when food spills. There are many times I have to steal the ketchup two tables across because I dunk, not dip. It is only after I’m done eating and my plate is removed that I begin writing. I’m a messy eater, and that gets in the way of my concentration. There’s a small patch of bushes and trees clinging to the building, which adds shade over my face, helping me find all those missing letters that were blocked from the sun.
My set up consists of my Macbook Air, a book, my phone, ice water, and coffee. I’ve never been concise in my life, so I need the largest table there is. I need room. How anybody works by sitting in one of those little office chairs with no desk attached is beyond me. The art on the wall at Flying Star resembles the interior of Taco Bell from the 90s – zigzag lines and geometric shapes filled with all the primary colors.
Because Albuquerque is a worry-free state, people speak quietly. It’s hard to eavesdrop on conversations, yet I hear voices, distinct voices with New Mexican accents. But who am I to talk about accents when I’ve been told I sound like Marisa Tomei inMy Cousin Vinny. These conversations help with poetry. They are the starting lines of free-verse. I look out to the Sandia’s and catch the ten-minute weather Albuquerque is known for, but the film peeling away on my glasses prevents me from noticing the detail.
At Barnes and Noble, things are different. If anyone is eating, it’s because they don’t feel like making a larger purchase. Sugar and milk cover the counter, and at this point if they mix, it’ll become paste. Obnoxious “ah’s” are heard from across the cafe at the first sip of coffee. Relax. It’s Starbucks. When I’m procrastinating, I talk to only a few regulars – a man who’s also from New York, who prefers paying full price for books, and a lady I’ll call neurotic because, well, it is unnatural to be happy about everything, every day.
Kids are left wandering alone on the escalator.
“It’s like a playground, I heard a boy say.
“Keep it up, and it’ll be a lawsuit,” I thought.
A cannabis book was carelessly misplaced in the international travel section, but even though I work here, I didn’t want to move it. I mean, it does take you places. And that’s my bad joke of the day.
An episode of Friends plays in the background when I need a break, and because I can’t seem to move past season 4, Ross and Rachel have been together for nearly twenty-three years. When it’s not busy, my manager stops by and tells me a usual catastrophe for the 10thtime this week. The escalator broke, there was a bra left in the bathroom, or my personal favorite, and probably a store record, the phone call of a woman profusely apologizing for clogging the toilets.
Zimmerman library at UNM is a perfect space for writing and people watching, which leads to even better writing, sometimes poetry. One afternoon after forgetting to eat breakfast, I unwrapped the hot breakfast burrito I got from Frontier and scarfed it down in minutes while being watched by what looked like two confused freshman. When I noticed bacon falling from the bottom of the tortilla, I grabbed it before it hit the foil and devoured it. They laughed and left, and I wrote about it.
I’m an unprepared writer. If I have my laptop, it’s at a battery percentage of twenty, and if I have a notebook, the pens lost their ink or the pencil’s lopsided lead is ready to fall with just one push to the paper. In that case comes the next best thing. Reading.