The poetics of space

If there is a god (and if it may be called 'it') it lives in the Gulf Stream where the currents are swift and the depth fathomless and Ernest Hemingway once sailed a boat made of good sturdy English sentences over the surface of bright blue water.

Tonight, on a completely different latitude, it's Happy Hour at the bar on the corner of Alder and 9th in Portland, Oregon and all drinks are half price.

A man and a woman sit beside one another at the bar. Neither of them know one another; neither of them wish to know one another.

He's happy to sip a Bombay Sapphire martini and read a newspaper story about a quixotic female politician who seems to know her mission is doomed from the beginning.

She orders a draft beer, extracts a notebook and a well-worn copy of Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space" from the deepest recess of her purse, and begins writing.

She writes up a storm and though he is close to her, he can't see what she is writing.
She's right-handed; her handwriting looks from a distance to be perfectly formed, organized into distinct topic headings under which her writing flows and flows.

Her left hand lies limply beside the notebook, as if it's not sure whether it belongs to her. He sees that her left hand is withered, that perhaps she was born without fingers, that her good hand must be saying everything that needs to be said but her left hand is too lonely for words.

The man and the woman sit like this for awhile, two strangers sitting beside one another, until it's time for him to disappear.