Old library, new squiggles

I am at the Quyeanbean library. Specifically, my hands are on a white table engulfed by a green fortress of a desk partition blocking an old window overlooking an old city. A city they say, is one of Australia’s historic inland cities. The city looks like a country town. I say that even though I never lived in country towns, never visited them much. Perhaps my impression of a country town is from cowboy movies where lean Clint Eastwoods stand in the middle of a mud-dirt road holding a gun, eyes wrenched, with a hat obstructing cold, grimsome looks.

I take a sip of the flat-white-with-one-sugar. One sugar, I always insist. I never check what or how much the barista adds to the cup. I don’t even know the composition of the so-called flat white. It’s not white. It’s brown. Well, I don’t even know that for sure, I drink with the lid closed. It tastes brown. And it’s not flat by any means. Flat means bland, spineless, tasteless. This coffee is hot and deceitful. This coffee, or the first sip of it, already induced enough neurochemicals in my system, enough to make me write this piece, sitting at the desk, leaning closer and closer to the page, my hands scribbling squiggles of blue ink on a yellow page, my breath bouncing off the page, mixing with the slice of coffee I just ingested. My elbows are squeaking and slipping by the shake and thrust of my writing hand.

I write a lot these days and I seem to flow on forwards by a stream of consciousness, dwelling on the moment. My face is stiff, lips curled, eyes clasped on the topic that I found or made sense of, from the string of last few words imprinted on the page. My hand isn’t stopping, it suddenly relishes the attention it’s got. It is writing and at the same time being written about.

Who is writing?