Personally Impersonal

This will be my first personal post,
just for the record, the Anthony Todd post was, I must say, pretty personal, but since it was obviously all about how awesome Anthony Todd is and about the whole cute, deep, inside parts of our relationship, it only halfway counts. And the one about music, is too abstract to be personal since I really hate that I wrote it.

But, this post shall be all about Baine's, the small, or somewhat large, depending on what you are comparing it to, coffee shop/bookstore/music/CD/guitar supply/pottery selling/ good food making/live music/ latte art creating store we have here on main street Appomattox. Now, Appomattox, is to say the least a very...slow paced town, with somewhat like minded people that are saddled in their ways of 'down to Earth', 'homegrown'...thinking. So, one might think, a cool but not hip, definitely not hip, but more urbane place might not catch on here. But, thankfully it has and celebrated its 5th birthday last year. The building itself was dilapidated and went under a restoration well before that, as well as most of mainstreet and first evolved into an antique's shop, or this being my first memory of any store that is in the original Baine's building. The shop was very large if I can recall and seemed to be busy when it first opened, but, I guess you could say, fortunately closed. Bryan Baines, the owner, then bought it along with his wife Debbie and developed a coffeeshop from it. The shop was very sparse at first and the furniture and books was bare bones at my first memory of it, being that I was only 11 at its inception. The hardwood floors were dark, but, overall the store was light, helped out by a sky blue ancient sort of tiled lifted ceiling and large front windows that look directly out onto the street, to the railroad tracks and farther on to Liberty. Not until last year was the upstairs open as well, which is pretty spacious and very quiet, usually, for studying or reading or just hanging out. I really did sort of fall in love with it when I was younger, just the feeling of being there, usually when it was cold during the winter, on Fridays or Saturdays when live bands come and play covers, their own songs, or music in general, and I would sit with my friends or my sister, squeezing into the kids section and playing scrabble since the leather couch space was always occupied and I didn't want to hover near my parents. The delectable drinks were also a draw, and I should probably credit the store for a coffee addiction that has only grown over time. Treated to cheescake and warm drinks and lively bluegrass music I spent good times developing memories there. As I got older, though, my time became split and I didn't have the ride, nor the free time to spend there as much through early high school. I always wanted to work there though, but Jude beat me sophmore year since he was older than I was. I then pestered Bryan the rest of the year about him possibly hiring me, until, I think, inevitably he caved and I was promised a job in late August, a couple months after my sixteenth birthday when the summer was coming to an end. The job cut lengthened an already collosal schedule and unfortunately I stopped running because I couldn't manage everything. But, I still loved working there and as my schedule shortened and the days became shorter as well, I took running back up. Now, my Friday nights are more eventful with me working, the crowds usually come in waves as church groups come to visit or friends meet up and it varies on the celebrations or performances of the night. The store caters to many different types of customers, old to young, talented, artistic, talkative or sociable people who like to come in, smell coffee, listen to music and chat. I don't mind the late nights, even when I have to study because there really is no other place I would rather work here. I am also developing my latte art skills, even though I'm not allowed to mess with the expresso machine. I'm not a hipster because I work there, I just love my coffee, my music, and that store. What better way to spend time working than to enjoy your work?

Saving Grace

This is how snow feels.

What is the color of water?

It drips silently from your unwilling pores in salty tears of pain and heat. The body purifies it and pours it into the liquid oceans. The ocean rocking like women's knees. So deep you take a step in and your over your hair. Liquid crystal particles swimming over you, your stationary body held up by invisible hands defying gravity's pull and rebelling against the sun god that warms the surface, sending paper sheets sifting to adorn the skin and dissolve above the abyss that swallows man and beast. Around you is the deepest tourqouise, sea-green, aquamarine, skies and jet planes, foutains where the children roll up their pants legs and dip just their toes into the cold water, pulling out wishes cleaned. This water is the tap of some ebb of life, pulling out with the tide, death, we lend our liquids to the Earth, where we began we end, made of some seed, watered and with growth occuring of a red water that walks in the day and lays its head down at night. Does that make our water a blood, a red warm dew that rolls down the backs of children at the park or down the steep slope of a leaf of grass upon which we walk with wet feet and mixed feelings? Do we paint with a red water, making velvet coats on one-dimensional, austere women, to allow the water to seep to the corners and roll the paper's edge. Or is it that water a natural blue, of violet and violent tendencies and cerulean under the magnification of a convex lens as it rolls playful, wild beads out of our hands to return to its everholding necklace upon our mother, will never own a color, but will own every shade, tinge, stain and mark?