A Lighter Day

I went to the café in the fancy new Four Seasons hotel downtown for the second time yesterday.

Interesting historical-culture moment:

I ordered a small oat-milk latte with hazelnut syrup (basically, ice cream),
and as I was getting out my wallet, the [handsome] barista said,

"That's $6.61."
Seeing I was pulling out cash, he amended it, "––or six dollars, if you're paying in cash."

"Really?" I said, thinking that was an unusually large discount for paying cash. (Sometimes places discount 3 percent for cash, or whatever it costs them to run a credit card.)

"Yeah," he said, "we round down because we don't keep any coins, so we don't have to bother with change."

Wow. Pennies, I get, but whole quarters? I guess money really isn't worth much?

At least they still take cash, unlike some places. I like paying in cash.
I also liked seeing customers in clean, sharp clothes, with expensive hair cuts.
Where I spend most of my time, that's a rarity. I kinda forget that many people are doing well, and plenty are doing very well...

Sometimes thrift store customers are barely wearing clothes.
Shirtless? Shoeless?
No problem.
And more. (Less.)
One day this summer, a woman came in wearing a super-short spandex dress--really, it was a skin-tight shirt, not a dress-- with pubic hair clearly visible below the hem...
I asked her if she'd like a free skirt, and she said she'd just like a pair of underwear.

Which, of course, I was happy to give her.

Anyway, this is all part of my ongoing effort to lighten up and to get out more, traveling beyond my usual 2-mile radius--even just coming downtown more (though it's far from reinvigorated).

I'd gone to the café because I went downtown to pick up the library book I'd mentioned yesterday, Around the World in 80 Books (2021).

It's an easy, chatty read--a hop, skip, and jump through 80 books about or from different places (and times), written during the pandemic (originally as blog posts, I think) by Harvard comp. lit prof, David Damrosch.

The authors & books are mostly familiar to me. I've read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, some of Donna Leon's Venetian mysteries, Murasaki Shikbu's Tale of Gengi; P. G. Wodehouse...
I haven't read many famous books he includes, such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart or Proust--I rely on lazy three-page overviews, like here.

So, like I said, I'm trying to lighten up, get out of the armpit of Lake St., and that impulse started when I last went to Four Seasons, in the fall, with a friend, and his distressed look as I was talking about work made me feel unremittingly DARK...

Not that that darkness is not real, but it could be tempered with some light---and definitely a simple change of scene helps.

At the library, I saw a sign for a Zine-Making Night, so I invited a friend who has mentioned she'd like to make a zine.

When was the last time I went to something so frivolous?

YEARS ago?

I've also been going to the coffee shop in the art institute-- their atrium is a pleasant place to sit for as long as you like. Sometimes I even wander in a gallery when I finish my coffee. (Museum entrance is free.)

Again--you see lots of people who have covered all their private parts. Often, quite fashionably. Sometimes I'm disgusted with the display of wealth--even the children wear designer clothes (my god, the expense--they can throw quarters away, for sure)---BUT I am lightening up, so mostly I just enjoy it.

"What beautiful design and construction for small bodies!"

I was there for three hours talking with Marz yesterday, and a staff member came around handing out free tickets to their latest ticketed ($20) exhibit, which ends in ten days--In Our Hands, Native Photography 1890 to Now.

ABOVE: "TV Indians", 2017, by Cara Romero, Chemehuevi, born 1977

And speaking of lightening up--I got home around 5 p.m. and it was still a little bit light out. It's happening! Meanwhile, temps are dropping to where they should be, in a normal year--in the teens. The lakes are still unfrozen though, and I wonder if we'll drop below zero this winter.
Of course it's nice for biking, but it is ominous. No quarter given.