things you’re doing feel more real
if you’re paying to be wherever you’re doing the doing
somewhere you’ve spent your last five dollar bill
for a concoction that comes from other continents
isn’t this what they meant when they said
that all successes must pay their dues?
after reading:
Not often but more frequent these days are the Starbucks coffee shops where single men take their notebooks. While it is obvious that most people hold their pens with their right hands, illnesses and misfortune come more frequently as one ages. Some people, though not many any more, still live on farms. But they could write in the kitchen and mail things out if they wanted to.
– Koon Woon, “Mostly…”
narinda heng 
it seems very artistic to spend your last $5 on a coffee. Maybe not practical, but that’s the essence of art, isn’t it?
It’s funny to think about my past as a young person like the ones Koon Woon writes about, feeling somehow legitimized as a writer by sitting in a Starbucks with my notebook. Meanwhile there are people who “write in the kitchen and mail things out.” That, to me, is the essence of art. To make it no matter what.
I wouldn’t necessarily equate being artistic with being impractical. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate wonderful coffee. There are plenty of reasons to go and pay for coffee and a place to sit and write.
I recently paid $4 for a coffee at the shop where I worked in a frenzy to meet my 2014 chapbook deadline. So.