Castle Street Nights

I woke up this morning with an intense pang of joy. It hit me in the solar plexus with an inexplicable potency--like I'd mainlined sunshine! Naturally, I did the responsible thing and after a little self-reflection, realized it was only hypomania and not a valid excuse to redecorate the house or revamp the wardrobe.

 

Buoyed by the oojah-com-spiff mood, I floated into the salle de bains only to find Ms. Wonder, already present and lounging like an escapee from the pasha's harem.

Have I told you about the Wonder? Surely I have. What a woman! Those pouty lips, those emerald green eyes, that strawberry blond hair.

When I expressed how happy it made me to see her, she gave me a certain look. It was not the look I'd hoped for, and I considered it quite a slice of fruitcake--dense and hard to swallow. 

I realize that she's recovering from minor surgery feeling some discomfort, I'm sure, but still, I felt a bit let down. Not that I expected unbridled happiness. Her Russian soul is burdened by centuries of angst and is unprepared for such frivolity.

I kissed the top of her head, wished her well, and set off to cross the Cape Fear River and bring me to the heart of the Castle Street Arts District.

Rarely does Castle Street get the kind of praise lavished on the rest of the city--probably due to the lack of high-end retail glitter. Despite the surface appearance, a rich tapestry of subculture makes the district a great place to be on any given morning. As Tolkien wisely mused, "All that is gold does not glitter."

Out in the bright sunshine, the joy bubbled up once more and I entered the doors of Luna Caffé with a light heart and a tra-la-la on my lips. 

"Grande dark," said the barista placing my usual on the counter with a tone of indifference one might expect from a Large Language Model chatbot. This was not at all the desired tone. Too cool, too indifferent, too uncaring.

The barista was, no surprise, Hannah Kay, the self-anointed emergency backup mistress of the greater Castle Street night. Her attitude of barely tolerable disdain for the clientele is due to dancing the night away and then applying complex eye makeup and facial hardware each morning. 

Her nights are spent, by the way, in Egret Coffee Caffé and Dance Bar, which is in the Soda Pop District not Castle Street Arts.

"Good morning, Hannah," I said, in tones so measured they could balance on a high wire, and I meant it to sting.

"It may be good for you," she shot back, "but have you ever had to open this café at 6:00 in the morning after a night of being stalked by a ninja vampire cat hell-bent on ending life as we know it in Wilmawood?"

This new motif presented an interesting diversion, but I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that just yet. 

"There is that," I said hoping to avoid any further discussion of what I guess was the Halloween night party at the Egret.

"If you only knew how fragile the defenses are that keep the general public from wholesale disaster, you would cry like a baby and wet your pants," she said with a hard-edged eye.

"Oh, I don't know," I replied nonchalantly, "It may not be as bad as all that when you consider that the general public is endlessly annoying with little or no provocation."

She started noticeably, spilling a customer's skinny mocha something, and then stared at me with the look of someone caught feeding Fruit Loops to her goldfish.

"I wish I'd said that," she muttered thoughtfully to no one in particular. Again, for the third time that morning, a feeling of joy surrounded me, and I immediately logged into SuperBetter to award myself 10 points for "meaningful human contact."

Once more a pure heart and perseverance are victorious over the forces of darkness or whatever ails you. Each moment holds more good than bad if we only take a deep breath and look for it. Life is full of...oh, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill. Enjoy the good times and leave the bad behind.