here is wherever you need to be

Found written on a napkin at the Starbucks by the Randolph Street Metra stop, Chicago, IL:

not happy here, but is it me or here?

It's an underground Starbucks near a train station and I think that leads to deeper thoughts...and of course no one is suggesting that Starbucks itself was causing the unhappiness. More likely it merely provided the beverage to stimulate such reflective thoughts, and the kindly recycled napkin to write out a question that we've probably all asked ourselves at some point in time. 

Pictured:  Woman in a Café (Jean-Louis Forain, circa 1885) from www.the-athenaeum.org

bustelo and the beats

It's hard to resist Café Bustelo, both for the rich flavor and because it comes in that wonderful red and yellow can that always seems to brighten up wherever it goes.  Also, Café Bustelo makes me think of an excerpt from The Portable Beat Reader that describes the creative process behind Brenda Frazer's Troia:  Mexican Memoirs (first published in 1969 under the name Bonnie Bremser).  As Brenda/Bonnie detailed: "...discipline consisted of copying my favorite author, Kerouac, and adapting a ritualistic existence centered around the daily hour or so of actual writing.  I had only my memories, and recalling them was part of the creative atmosphere I set for myself ...I lived on Café Bustelo, beans, and rice."  Café Bustelo has Cuban origins but it also comes in a Mexican-style instant version, which might have been just as appropriate a beverage for the writing of Mexican Memoirs.  And true Beat fans might consider fixing a cup of Bustelo and reading Troia: Mexican Memoirs themselves, because the story is autobiographical and intense and as fascinating as any of the doings of Beat Generation men.