The Lost and Finding

To him, Jesus Christ was a booted foot disappearing through a street-side door. Each time, he would abandon his bike, dash after it, and stand there pushing the button for someone to buzz him up, and each time to no answer. Since that is how Jesus would have it, he did his best to peddle past that street from then on. The other couriers hung at the coffee shop two blocks away. Their cheap bikes corralled outside the place where the bitter coffee and baristas made them pucker.
“Why don’t you write Him a letter? Get an appointment,” his friend asked.
“We’re frickin couriers. I’m not sending anything post in this town.”
“What about the man who says Hallelujah?”
“What about him?”
“Well, he probably knows Him. Maybe he can get you in.”
He remembered when he first heard the man in the black glasses speak the word. It was in front of the hot chocolate machine in the echoing lobby of One Financial Plaza. “Hallelujah,” he said, and shilled in three quarters for a cup. Another time, he uttered it on the elevator between the 55th and 54th floors of the Bancorp building. He appeared in as many places throughout town as they did. He seemed just as intimate with the towers as they were, and for this they gave him respect—even though his aims remained a mystery.
“Yeah. He can probably hook me up, if I can track him down.”
“But I don’t get why you gotta see Jesus so bad.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“So?”
“So, I’m not too clear on why right now.”
They drank their coffee.
“You know that mural on Washington?” he asked.
“Which one? Sheera Warrior Princess, on Comic World? Or the Love Power wall looking over the freeway? Paint peeled Christ, standing, arms outstretched.”
“To all us sinners,” he said, gazing out the window at his old bike, chained with the others to the same guardrail. “I think that’s why I need to find Him.”
They drank their coffee.
“Yeah. I get you man,” his friend said.

The Dark Surf

Something desperate made Jared do a desperate thing. It made him slip off the beach into the maze of churning breakers hunched in the mad black ocean. One moment he was perched quietly watching those people get drunk on his parent’s beer in the peripheral glow of the fire, and the next he was running along the beach, and the next he was up to his hips in piercing cold water, and going deeper—the warmth of fire and the party left behind for the embrace of the vast pacific. Now, after a long battle amid the sharp rock, and clapping surf that left him bloody and shivering uncontrollably, he clung to the flat head of a protruding rock and looked out across the expanse of dark water. Over his shoulder, the only thing he could pick out was the blinking speck of the bonfire. That’s when he realized what the desperate thing was. It was The Valley of the Shadow of Death. That was it. Geology class was such a crock. He knew Kelly’s invitation was meant to evaporate: a flippant throwback to the kid with the city of Portland tied around his ankle. But it wasn’t about them. On this rock, she along with the others were only soft winks in the orange fire. This was more profound.
He never thought of The Valley as a hot place, not like a fire or hell. For him it was always cold. Cold like television and pro sports, like suburban sprawl and the American way. Cold like school, like all those code words polite people used to stay polite. Societies are put together to obscure The Valley and he saw now that he had been trudging between it’s margins for years. And now there it was writhing in front of him. Finely unmasked. They stared into the fire and sang and talked, but he gawked at what stood behind them. It was the chance to trade all that in: climb into the gaping maw of leviathan. Because there is only one thing to do with The Valley of the Shadow of Death—get to the bottom of it. Scramble, claw, crawl. Find the final slough of despond, take your last living breath, dive in, and swim down into it’s muddy depths grasping for that one pearl handle, that opens into the piercing light of pure life.
And now here he was. This far out. The whole ocean set against him. His hands and feet dripped blood. But he knew there was a long way to go. Many dark hours lay ahead, because he could sense the bottom still further out. He recited the rest of the verse against the thundering breakers, and jumped into the rising tide.

Chaos Theory

DJ Scribble crashed his speeding moped into a heap of empty beer cases between two dumpsters, emerging after a brief pause to ensure the bike was completely hidden by cardboard. He let the blasting earphones slide down his neck to expose his ears to the first throbbing beats faintly echoing from storm drains below his feet. The DJ Chaos door pass was slipped under his door just hours ago, and ever since then, he patted his back pocket every few minutes to ensure it was still there. All the entries back here were dark, but only one came with a big black, leather vested man hedged by a garden of cigarette butts around his feet. DJ Scribble produced the little red card and held it in plain sight for the big man to see.
“Show’s closed, kid,” the big man said. “It’s full up.”
“Skoop boop be woop!” DJ Scribble shouted. “Ka goop bleh bleh shoo.” He flapped his arms in odd shapes.
“Ok?” the big man asked.
“This is the truth, brotha. Klam floo hoohaw!” His contortions now involved swift leg jerks. “This is what the world actually consists of—shaw dida coom few!”
He stopped the gyrations, but the big man didn’t stop crossing his arms. The wildly erratic beats of the show continued below. The man obviously hadn’t heard of entropy before. He obviously didn’t know what was going on downstairs, what was eventually going to happen up here—to him. To his club. His city. The universe. He savored the big man’s naiveté. “Just work here, huh? Don’t know, right? Second law of thermodynamics?” He pointed over the big man’s shoulder. “They do. That’s why I came, brotha. It’s my church down there. Last year, my place of conversion. Just let me in, man. They’d have me with em, if they knew I’zere.”
“Does that thing have FM?” the big man asked softly.
DJ Scribble looked down at his beat up tape deck. “Yeah.”
“Let me see it.” He nodded his head towards the door. “Cause brother. They’re all faken it down there. Not your crowd. Here’s the tunes for true believers—like you.”
DJ Scribble unclipped the tape deck from his belt. The man leaned over and grazed both dials with his finger and watched the thin kid move the speakers over his ears.
“It’s just static.” DJ Scribble hollered.
“Yup.”

Café Life

Even though Charis didn’t own a television, she still saw her share of shows. ‘Saw’ is the operative word because the TV set in question glowed silently in the store window across the street from the café. Her father always said TV rotted your brains, but she felt immune to its detrimental effects as long as it was punctuated by the bustling street life of Grand Avenue. She could watch as long as real life played between them: other people driving by, smoking cigarettes, walking their animals, getting in cars, holding hands. Sometimes she imagined the characters in the shows were the ones milling around under its blue-grey light, like they were queued up for their turn on the screen. But she knew they were just ordinary people. Livin life. Being alive. This was Tuesday, and good old Eduardo—the only man she trusted to make her coffee right, set cup and saucer on the edge of the table and smiled down at her. She broke her gaze to let out a sheepish thanks, but he already knew, and went back to the countertops. That night the café was the last to close. Eduardo had the chairs up, and Charis gathered her things. The street had long since emptied, but as she walked home, the television still played on behind her. She would sleep well, she thought.

True Faith

‘And what can I do for you sir?’ Kim peeked out at the pony-tailed man over the tall reception desk.
‘I came down here to be evangelized,’ he said, shilling over an old pamphlet. ‘Someone put this in my pocket while I was passed out at ozzfest last year. I got your address here on the back.’
‘Oh,’ Kim said, and pushed some buttons hurriedly. She muffled something into the end of a phone and looked over at the man repeatedly as she listened, nodding her head. ‘Did you see the sinner’s prayer printed on the back?’ She asked.
Stu flipped the tract over. ‘Oh yeah,’ he tapped the bottom with his finger, ‘but I thought it might not be real unless I confessed to someone or something.’
She turned away. ‘He saw the prayer’ she said to the floor. More silence, more nods. She turned back and smiled. 'What's your name, sir?'
'Stu Jenkensen.'
‘I have good news Mr. Jenkensen. If you read the prayer you are actually already… Evangelized.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘I understand how that can come as a surprise to you.’ She hung up the phone. ‘But let’s not make your trip down here for nothing.’ Kim disappeared behind the desk and re-emerged with an armload of materials. ‘Mr. Jenkensen, do you like sports? Because first of all we have a brand new sports Bible filled with many inspiring sports stories. And here is the church directory, a guide to the rapture, and you also get to share your faith with this self adhesive bumper sticker.’
Stu flipped the sticker over. ‘Are you Saved?’ it said in bold red letters.‘Thanks, but don’t I need to believe or something?’ He asked.
Kim smiled the exact same smile, ‘You wouldn’t be down here without faith, Stu.’ She placed the tattered tract on top of the others and handed them tenderly into his outstretched hands. ‘The best thing you can do now is call one of those numbers and get your walk started.’
Stu could tell the conversation was over. ‘Oh, ok.’ He turned around, arms full, to the double glass doors.
The stuff got thrown in the trunk, but the sticker stared back at him from inside. ‘Are You Saved?’ It asked. Even though he knew he didn’t believe, he peeled the sticker, put it on his car, got in, and drove away.

Broken Elevator

Grady wondered if he could just stay right where he was: live the remainder of his life splayed out halfway down the last flight of stairs, clutching his seat cushion in one hand, with his chair toppled at the bottom, and his things strewn between them. At first he wanted to get away. Go somewhere. Slide back down these steps, snoop around until he found someplace easy, then push his way in and settle down. People did it all the time, they started over, they moved on, they got born again. But, as his mind visualized his escapes, he realized that he could never imagine a place without him in it, where those two little legs, that ever felt like strangers, weren’t dangling from him. So he laid there. The fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered. Two flights down, the door yawned and closed with a thump. He knew it was Laura by her footsteps, the same ones that always walked by his door to the flat at the end of the hall. There was no time to hide, and he knew he couldn’t pretend to be ok. She came around the corner, surprised then concerned. Her handbag slid smoothly off her shoulder. 'Are you ok?' She asked.
'The elevator was broken,' he managed to say.

Suburban Decay

The president of the League Against Suburbs convened the meeting. What do you have for us? Trevor asked the slouched initiate sitting in the plastic chair beside the coffee table. I have these, he said, offering his hand which opened to reveal five or six small bolts and screws. The members nodded approvingly. Where did you do this? Trevor asked. Applebees. I took apart the toilet paper dispenser in the men’s bathroom and got one of the hinges off the dumpster out back. But I forgot that at home. The members nodded approvingly.

Father

Jenny always called things stupid. Early on, her friends knew about those stupid meat-head showoffs in gym class, and her mom heard how Sara Weiland was so stupid when she stole her boyfriend at summer camp. Later, the internet was stupid. Nutra-sweet gives you cancer, and was stupid. Long distance was stupid. The book report she spent the whole weekend on turned out to be stupid. And last week, her straight thin hair was stupid and such a pain. After a while, people that knew her got used to it. She wasn’t impressive enough for the habit to wear off on anybody. It just sort of faded from an irritation to something that didn’t exactly register—lumped together with the Jenny people knew. The only person or thing that never earned the pronouncement of stupid, was her dad. The mystery surrounding him withheld her judgment. Also, there hung this certain trepidation at the thought of lumping him in with the rest of the world. But that one morning walking over to his house, watching him read his retarded paper: he glanced up and completely missed the mess of a little girl standing in front of him. An eternity passed. Then he just looked back down at the story about the beet farms closing up in Moorhead. I hate you, she squeaked, and walked straight for the bathroom.

The Urban Poor

Those marginalized people are so calculating. You wouldn’t think to use the word ‘sophisticated’ on them, but it fits their ways. To them, everyone’s a vending machine. They put money in and push just the right button. Vavoom, they get what they want. I always flash the “sold out” light when they’re standing in my glow. Coke first, nope, then Sprite. Sorry no service. Then the strong sellers try diet, and still I’m all: ‘Look chum. You best move on to that one down the corner, before I call the cops.’ Mention cops and they move along, cause urban poor folks know the two rules of perpetual poverty: Don’t get evicted. And don’t get yourself arrested. Once either of those happens, you’re instantly shoved down to the second basement. Seven eleven won’t employ you, and you can kiss section eight goodbye. Life gets hard when your soche tells that story. You have your rights, yes, you've sown them all over town. And I’ve got mine right here, on Broadway and Lake—public property, watching you tumble with the guy with the hundred dollar bill hanging out of his pocket. Yeah I’ll call the cops. Yeah I’ve got money that you’ll win. But you won’t get away. All at once you’ve got your sway on, wiping your mouth, saying he spit in your face when you asked him for some change, but they’ll shrug that off. His clothes smell sweeter than yours, and what are you doing asking for change? They put you in the backseat: a shifting mass of calculations. I get back in my career path. I was only down here for the cheap Camels.

Unwanted Self

Rifle knew about the other man in his bed. That was the problem. Earlier that day, while eating cake in the break room, he wondered who he would find when he stumbled into his dark room late that night. He wondered while Nancy stood in front of him, bellowing garbage—all he could think of was getting into bed and finding his sheets already warm. So now, in the almost dark, he rolled over, shifted his legs to the far edge of the bed, and let the clock wash his face in a thick red. The minutes slowly added up. He needed to get help—he came to that conclusion five days ago. The only question now was where to go for it. This is complicated, he thought.

Vo-Tech School

You are all on your way to a satisfying career. That is how they opened the gate, those specialists up front. Not that it was bait, or merely a lie. It’s not like they lied. He WAS on his way to a satisfying career. And stretched out before him lay a herd of round hay bales grazing on the perfect green hills under an azure sky. He played on those hay bales before adolescence. Their largeness loomed—before the war. Before all that shit. And now he was on his way back, sitting at a desk in some fluorescent room that bled technology with the smallest prick. All around swirled little pieces of the stuff that would bring him there. A child’s smile creased his lips.

Open Mindedness.

So I opened my mind. I left the small town of my youth—the lock jawed high school, the church kids flirting with their hands in their pockets. I cut the webs, and flew away to the metropolis—the offspring of human and machine, my new abode. It was scary like the dark, when I first sunk my old canoes, stroked some new ideas and people I had met. At first, I wedged my way into closed spaces where they told me stories in hushed tones. Freedom, to be, to let each moment swell to such intensity of existence, unencumbered by everything except desire. They let me feed. And then I saw it just walking down the street, this gospel, scrawled across brick, tenderly wrapping each post. My gospel. The unity of it all, I thought, staring at it in bathroom stalls. I tried to pierce its truth in three messy words. It was times like those, getting off the pee splashed toilet, wandering back to my flat, that I thought back to the old years: drew extra conclusions from the stark comparisons. Laid my new family on top of my old. And judged. The water was running in my kitchen sink, but I didn’t turn on the lights. I slumped there in the linoleum. Each moment exploded, and I just sat there with my mind open. Tears littered each cheek.

slough of despond -- stay away!

Not much to do today.
I feel like the Dead Sea.
Drinking too much coffee.
I want to be this guy.

Grain Elevators on Hiawatha. I did a u-ey to catch this shot.

Coffeeshop Facts: Diamonds Coffee

Diamonds Coffee Shoppe
1618 Central Ave NE Minneapolis
Google Map Link (actually it's in the white building across the street by the train tracks)
Directions
Website
Alcholic friendly? Yes, AA meetings in back room.
Thrift store couches = two.
Train sounds? Yes.
Maniquin with a coconut br*? Check.
Barista wierdness? Loudmouthed lesbian co-owner who says "the F bomb", and mousy emomales that play music fridays in the back.
Kids = tolerated, but not tailored to.
Dive quality = 75%
Food = overpriced sandwich w/pickle and spoon. Soup provided.
Whiteboard menu quality = 1.5 out of 5 stars which therefore equals 5 out of 5 stars.

Comments:
This classic culturally subversive urban cafe' sports all the expected 7os and older recycled pop culture ciche to give users the ability to enjoy their coffee beverage without all the guilt derived from participating in the ultra-consumer garbage slide of the Ikea slash Walmart multinational corporate factory.