This ain't Cheers

The bar is a quiet and slightly dismal animal at 2:00 pm on a Wednesday. There are no blustery conversations, there is no ogling of passers by. No baseball scores are discuss. In fact, you don't hear much of anything. There's a lot to see though. And taste. You can see tired men slouching over their drinks, moisture beading on the glasses. You can see a soap opera on the tiny color TV above the bar. You can watch as the liquid level in your bottle drops slowly by the minute. But you won't hear anything. Everyone is silent, the lunch rush is over, now it's the time for people who want a quiet moment away from the office, to escape the stress of their office, or to exercise a little white collar rebellion by drinking during the workday. Maybe it's a little of all of the above.

When I leave the bar $4.50 lighter, there's a cold lemony sensation in my stomach. It's fading slowly, but I still feel tingly and keep a lopsided smile on my face. It evens and spreads as I glance at one of the mirrored bank building, and see the cloudy sky reflected back at me. My mind harkens back to the last time I saw a building like that, which was after a most successful shopping expedition in Montreal. All the joy of that particular day rushed back and blotted out all my morning troubles.

Wired on sugar and a little alcohol, I strode back to my office, hoping to jot down just a little bit of this before the memory and impressions faded. How many journal entries have gone unposted because someone was far from a computer when the Muse struck them?