Checker board linoleum floors and dim lighting – the diner aesthetic. My bum rests on a red polyester lounge chair as Top 40 hits echo through the outdated speakers. I play with the straw in my diet coke. Stirring the soda in a clockwise direction, I look up at the person across from me, a friend, someone who cares about my well-being and current muddied-up mental status. He is making conversation, but I find myself absorbed by the bubbles, watching the coke slosh up up against the glass. Muffled tones and ignored well wishes, I choose to zone him out. Absorbed into my own mental cavity, my mind races. Thinking of past loves, past lives, and my honest-to-goodness past lies, I rebuild my mental barrier and tune back to diner conversation. Picking up the final few fries from the fries from a now barren plate, I pause once again and watch the soda bubbles.
The ice in the soda slows down to a small stir. The centre creates a tornado effect -Which much like my life, creates a pattern only broken by unprecedented interference. With every stir, the current beats back against the straw. My still empty stomach growls in protest as my wallet whines in agony. I’d kill for a bloody slice of cheesecake.

______________________________
12:10PM EXT. Populated city street.

It is blistering hot in the city. Every T-Shirt has been drowned in sweat and every ounce of cold has since evaporated, leaving me to long for the days where over-heating could be combatted by removal of a layer. Setting my oval frames on the bridge of my nose, I attempt to block out the Suns reflection.

I am at a cross-road, a strange reality where I am faced with…a blank slate – a tabula rasa. An open door to endless possibilities, all of which I am in full control of making. New job, new home, yet still saddled with the same mess. I found that it was time for a change of scenery, and a change of pace…tired of coffee shop romances and wasted time, I opted for a change.

12:15PM EXT.
Lighting a cigarette, I let the wrong choices billow out of my mouth. Stressed? Combat with vices. Angry? Combat with stronger vices. This has been the path I have currently taken. I start to wonder, “Would Robert Frost would pity me?” I made the uneducated decision to take the undesirable route. I took the road less travelled, but did not consider the solitude that would find me.

12:30PM INT. Coffee Shop
The summer rain rests on the pastel coloured chair. Was it supposed to rain? I am used to lies, but I did not peg the weather girl for a liar. The serenity felt from a typewriter filled coffee shop presents me with an undiscovered sense of serenity. Built up from history and preserved with rediscovered style, we can officially thank the hipster generation for something.

1:00PM INT. Car
I get irritable, so irritable that I become one chromosome short of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. I blame the irritability on my lack of coffee and inability to type.

________________________

We migrate to the patio. The cicadas echo the night filling the black sky with noise. This orchestral reminder that we, in fact do not own the night, reminds me of Tennessee. Reminding me of a place I once called home, where the sky is filled with stars and the world felt more at ease.
Maybe that is where this journey will take me, to a sense of fellowship and understanding where I can finally come to terms with where I am and what I do.

Who knows, maybe the world will surprise us.