the strand on a thursday

Sometimes you might sit in a cafe trying really hard to read Milton for an hour or two and start to get sad because the people you are staring at outside the window are not staring back at you. You might abandon the reading attempt and write anxiously in your notebook while tapping your foot. Outside it could very well be cloudy and you'll zip up your jacket and try to look like you're in a hurry, judging your self worth by whether or not you can keep up with the late-twenties businessman on the sidewalk next to you. You might think about all of these things and about what it means that you are thinking them and wonder if a metalife is real life, and wonder what everyone else occupies their mind with while they are eating lunch alone on a cloudy day. Milton, maybe.

But soon enough you'll probably see someone you know at a crosswalk and stop to talk about weekend plans, and the sun will come out for a few minutes and you'll have to squint to see westminster while the wind blows your hair all in your face. You will put some radiohead on your iPod, pretending that it just makes so much morse sense in england, and realize that it may be just a baby life, but you do actually have a life here, and think to yourself that maybe that could possibly be OK.