Red Letter Poem #312

The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

                                                

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #313

 

 

 

 

Ode To Café Pamplona

Cambridge, MA  1959-2020

 

 

Gracias a ti, Josefina Yanguas Perez,

for your subterranean sanctuary

its white stucco walls and low ceilings

lit warmly yellow,

windowsills alive with geraniums,

laughter, pontifications,

writings, readings, ideas,

 

where your diminutive Basque body

floats in each day, nodding kaixo or hola

to David, who writes a poem for you and Lorca;

to linguist, Lee, sipping espresso,

uttering Alhamdulillah in any language

as a loner listens and a woman

in a black beret writes at a far table;

 

and always professors and students wrangling

over politics, music, philosophy,

where language reigns over the coffee grinder’s growl,

chairs scrape the checkered floor by patrons

coming and going for communitas and caffeine,

bowls of Iruña gazpacho, flat pork sandwiches, pastries—

orders awaiting young male waiters, lean

as their thin black ties.

 

 

                                          ––Kathleen Granchelli

 

 

 

 

 

Submitting her poems to the Red Letters, Kathleen Granchelli could never have predicted the nature nor intensity of my response––especially toward one piece in particular.  But just the mention of that name––Café Pamplona­­––triggered a cascade of vivid memories: it’s 1975, and I have moved (inexplicably) from sunny California back to the frigid Northeast.  The bookstore job I managed to snag nets me the princely sum of $80 per week––and thus any entertainments in my free time needed to be just that: free, or very inexpensive.  I discovered that Harvard’s excellent Fogg Art Museum offered complimentary admission; I relished my idylls in their galleries.  Then I’d enjoy an hour in the poetry section of one of the numerous used bookshops that existed at the time around Harvard Square––browsing is another marvelous low-cost delight.  Inspired, and seeking sustenance, I’d repair to Café Pamplona––a small below-ground coffeehouse with true Old World charm.  That’s because the owner, Josefina Yanguas, modeled the place on the café life in the city of her beloved Spanish home.  Two bucks bought me a modest lunch and two hours sheltered from the cold. (I see you looking doubtful; a cappuccino for sixty cents!  A buck-and-a-quarter added a media noche sandwich to the order––with the remaining coins left on the saucer as a gratuity!)  I could read and write undisturbed because, if ever a courtly waiter approached a lingering customer, it was only to ask if he might bring another glass of water.  One word instantly comes to mind when I think of the Pamplona and, unsurprisingly, there it is right there at the outset of Kathleen’s poem: sanctuary.

 

But even if you’d never been a patron during the café’s 60-year lifespan, this poet’s wealth of carefully-observed detail makes you feel you’re seated at a table beside the whitewashed walls, idling perhaps on your own day off.  This is a people-watching paradise so perhaps you, too, would soon be sketching thumbnail portraits of Cambridge luminaries and the dashing demimonde––inspired by the sepia fresco by Conger Metcalf adorning the corner wall.  The rat-a-tat cadences in Kathleen’s poem perfectly reflect the companionable chatter of “professors and students wrangling/ over politics, music, philosophy,/ where language reigns over the coffee grinder’s growl…”.  At a time when I could not afford a writing studio, Pamplona was not only my atelier but the shared incubator for a profusion of ideas and visions, forming quite a fine brother/sisterhood.  Among others, there’s a mention of the café in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake.  And yes, that’s Amanda Palmer, of the Dresden Dolls, singing this lyric within “Truce,”: "You can have Africa, Asia, Australia, as long as you keep your hands off Café Pamplona."  How many artworks, movies, memoirs––not to mention love affairs––first took root in Josefina’s version of a public salon? 

 

And now add Kathleen to that list of bards celebrating this dearly-missed meeting place.  Perhaps that’s her, seated (virtually) by one of the few windows that allow a bit of sunlight into this espresso-scented cavern.  Shall I make an introduction?  For most of her career, Kathleen led the communications and community relations office for a not-for-profit R&D organization, following four years teaching students at the high school and college levels.  But upon retirement, her passion for poetry was reignited; her work has since appeared in such magazines as Mediterranean Poetry, Persimmon Tree, Seven Bridges Digital Magazine, and The Orchards Poetry Journal––many of her pieces reflecting her experience living in Australia and Greece.  Her chapbook, For the World, She Said, is slated to be published by Kelsay Books later this year or early in 2027.  All this reminds me of the almost infinite variety of reasons we are drawn to the work of certain poets: because of kindred memories; unimagined but enticing landscapes; or stylistic flourishes that strike some hidden emotional chord.  On first reading Kathleen’s poems, I was struck by this revelation: how much we have in common, often unaware.  How frequently we discover that some stranger’s vivid life-experience, their simmering dreams, their distant yet persistent music, creates a sympathetic vibration with our own minds.  How many passing close by us this very day once shared the same park or crowded café, the inexorable pull of a first line of poetry in their ear like some siren song?  A poem, too, is a gathering place for strangers to commune.  Thank you, Josefina!  Thank you, Kathleen!  The next round’s on me!

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

* The weekly installment is also available at

the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And visit the Red Letter archives at:

On Being a Regular by Jen Fries

On Being a Regular

Tremont Street, Boston, in June, collage on board, detail. I used to work down there.

An acquaintance of mine, poet and columnist Doug Holder, recently posed a question on social media: Have you ever been a regular, and what does that mean to you?

He was responding to an article in Esquire, “The Lost Art of Being a Regular,” by Mark Allen Burger. It’s paywalled (fair enough). Check your public library if you’d like to read it. In any event…

I realized that being a regular may indeed be a lost art, at least in the US. People my age are forgetting what it was like, and younger people never knew.

I further realized that we should probably revive this lost art, because we are entering a time when we’re going to need it.

Being a regular is a status relative to another person. It’s an earned title. You become a regular when someone else says you are, based on your interactions with them.

It’s a word belonging mostly to commerce, but it has the effect of de-business-ing business, of personalizing the impersonal. It’s a humanizing word that shifts the focus from transaction to relationship.

But what is it? How does it happen, and how does it work? I’ll tell you about my own experience.
Coffee and a Newspaper

In my home town, New York City, I commuted to work by the same route every weekday, along with thousands of other people, from Queens into Manhattan. Every morning, I stopped at the newsstand at the top of the stairs into the subway and bought the NY Times. I then went downstairs and stopped at the coffee stand in the station to get a regular coffee with milk and one sugar. I then continued down to the train with my paper and my coffee.

Beyond requesting my paper and ordering my coffee, and saying thank-you, I never spoke to anyone and barely made eye contact because that’s how we rolled in NYC.

And yet one day, I got to the newsstand, and my Times was folded and waiting for me, along with the papers of other regulars. I just had to put down my money and take it.

In about the same time period, I got down to the coffee stand one day and found my coffee waiting for me on the counter – regular, milk, one sugar, hot and fresh because the guy knew what time I’d be there.

We still didn’t talk to each other beyond me saying thank-you, which was now all I had to say.

I realized suddenly that I was part of the scene, the community. Despite the traditional New York conversation-avoidance, I was remembered, recognized. I was known to these people. If I ever went missing, those guys along my daily commute would be able to help the cops pinpoint just where and when I’d vanished.

A little while after that social breakthrough, I had another. I worked in those days in the financial district, near Wall Street. Back then, the work day was 9 to 5 with a lunch break from 12 to 1. This was universal. So every day, the narrow streets of lower Manhattan would be crammed with people arriving to work, then become empty and silent, then get crammed with people going out for lunch, then become empty and silent again, then get crammed with people going home, and then stay empty and silent overnight. (I know about overnight because sometimes my friends and I would wander around down there to decompress after getting out of the Village dance clubs, and it was just us and the rats and the ghost of Peter Stuyvesant.)
Peter Stuyvesant, still a regular on the lower Manhattan scene. Quick pastel sketch from a portrait, c. 1660, attr. Couturier.

Those crammed hours were absolute madness, and the lunch rush was the craziest because the traffic was less orderly than the morning and evening rushes.

Near the office where I worked stood a hamburger and hot dog joint. It was a tiny little storefront on the corner that only cooked 2 or 3 things with 2 or 3 variations each, and it was only open for lunch. What little they did, they did extremely well, though, and the place was incredibly popular, so much so that they had to create a hyper-efficient way to process customers in the limited lunch-rush time window.

They had one line going in the double-door entrance and another line going out. You’d ride the in-line to the counter (where there were always a few crusty old dudes eating in), and place your order with the guy who would shout it out to the short-order cooks at the grill behind him. Then you’d step to your left and pay and receive your food, which would be ready and bagged in seconds because they were already cooking everything on the menu. Then you’d turn around and ride the out-line back to the street.

They gave this service to literally hundreds of people within the space of a single hour.

Now, granted, I’m a creature of habit, and I had my favorite thing that I would get from that place every time I went, up to three days a week because it was cheap as well as good.

But still – hundreds of customers on a virtual conveyor belt every single lunch rush.

And yet a day came, surprisingly quickly, when I got up to the counter, and the guy said, “The usual?”

Stunned, I said, “Yes, thanks.” And he turned and shouted out exactly what I wanted. I will never comprehend how, out of that sea of humanity all getting burgers and hot dogs, he could remember anyone’s order or face, but the man obviously had the power of professionalism.

That’s what being a regular means to me. It means being a noticed presence in the spaces you occupy and move through. It means being recognized by identity markers unique to you. Small woman with long, dark hair. New York Times. Regular coffee, milk, one sugar, 7:30 AM. Hot dog, heavy mustard, sauerkraut, ginger ale. It means being part of someone’s world enough that they add you to their schedule. They prepare for you, reserve space for you. You become part of the easy, efficient flow of their work. You are expected, and missed when you don’t show up.

Sometimes, it can be moments like the time the delivery guy from our favorite Chinese restaurant came to our apartment by mistake. He was going to another apartment in our large building, but his feet carried him to our door by sheer force of habit, and he didn’t realize it until we were all looking at each other in confusion. And then we laughed.
All Our Third Places

Whether you’re in and out in 30 seconds or you stick around for hours, anywhere that you’re a regular becomes a “third place” in your territory.

Third places, a concept developed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, are spaces for free, informal, social interaction, additional to home and work. It’s your coffee shop, pub, park, bookstore, basketball court, hair salon, etc. I argue they can also be transitional spaces on routes we travel frequently, turning the route itself into a third place. Here’s a free article about the importance of third places by Ray Oldenburg and Karen Christensen in the UNESCO Courier.

Being a regular at a place grants you a certain emotional ownership of it. Something about it is now yours. Your paper, your coffee, your lunch, your time slot. Eventually, you might even have your table by the window, your pizza combo added to the menu with your name on it.

The day I became a regular at the news and coffee stands granted me ownership over my commute. That route became part of my home turf. I could relax and enjoy my morning that little bit more. I felt comfortable enough to look around and begin to recognize other regulars I shared it with, who also ceased to be strangers just by dint of being seen every day.

Has that ever happened to you?

Has a barista anticipated your order? Maybe your favorite Thai restaurant knows how spicy you like your drunken noodles. Is there a shop you spend so much time in that when a newbie asks for help, you take care of them before revealing that you don’t work there? Do you see the same joggers and families at the park every Saturday, and do they see you?

How many such third places do you have? Probably fewer now than before the pandemic. Covid cut us off from so much that was regular about our lives, but it was just the knock-out punch. It was already getting harder to become a regular before that disaster.

Our digitized, virtual, automated world yaps endlessly about connection and community, but it doesn’t want us to go anywhere or meet anyone. We save our coffee order to the app, but the app won’t anticipate our arrival or remark on our absence. The worker won’t connect our face to our cup. We’re responding only to the apps, not each other.

One-click ordering. Frictionless payment. Contactless delivery. These “conveniences” scrub the humanity out of our habits. They’re bad when we need them, as during a plague, but worse when we don’t.

Supposedly, eliminating all that interactive friction will free up more time for “quality” socializing. Really, though?

I mean, your commute is your commute. Is it better to make that daily trip with people to help you fuel up on the way out and wind down on the way back, or to do it in a bubble of invisibility and isolation?

And how will we do all this quality socializing when the work day is longer and more exhausting than ever? How much of that freed-up time gets spent doomscrolling before collapsing into bed?
Here-Place, Now-Moment
Devonshire Street, Boston, collage with wood, on board. One of my regular haunts.

When you leave your home, how many faces do you recognize, and how many might recognize you? Do you know which dogs belong to which houses on your street? Do you have a personal map of businesses and amenities along your various routes, favorites that you use again and again?

If you needed to beg a favor, or drop out for a couple of hours, or you were being followed by a suspicious van, where would you go? What haven or check-in spaces do you have, where you are “one of us”?

That’s what community is, our “us.” The We of We the People. It’s our extended home where we do all our regular stuff among our regular faces. We belong because we are participating members.

To be clear, I’m a hardcore introvert. I hate chatting, smiling, sparkling. I love silence and solitude. But even those who read books at ballgames are present. We recognize and are recognized. None of us has to perform a particular way to be part of the “us.” We just have to show up often enough to be a regular.

The Age of Convenience is failing us. We need those passing, superficial relationships with all their frictions. We must re-humanize our ordinary, daily lives.

We do that, first, by getting out of the house, and then by de-automating all those pesky little tasks we’re told are such a burden.

Turn your eyes from your phone to the person doing something for you. Order online but go to the local restaurant to pick up your meal in person. Say thank-you.

Choose your favorite businesses, services, amusements where you live, where you work, along your routes, and make a habit of stopping in rather than adding another app. Use your commons – parks, beaches, libraries, transit, etc. You part-own the damn things, after all.

Pop the bubble. Put the phone in your pocket. Be present in the here-place and now-moment. Little by little, you’ll start feeling the “us” around you. You’ll hear the music and languages. The dogs will learn your scent, and you’ll learn your neighbors’ roses and holiday decorations. You’ll collect arcane, insider knowledge of all your places. You’ll start thinking of your street, your shops, your station.

And before you know it, you’ll be surprised by someone greeting you with, “The usual?” followed by, “Didn’t see you last week.”

And then you’ll be a regular.


Note: The essay above contains 2,022 words which, according to western numerology, reduces to 6. The number 6 represents love, partnership, and community. In tarot, the sixth Major Arcanum is The Lovers, while the sixes of the minor suits represent various forms of shareable benefits. The 6 of Swords, an easing of burdens and difficulty. The 6 of Wands, victory and leadership. The 6 of Cups, relationships, memories, and simple joys. The 6 of Pentacles, sharing and mutual aid.

Please note also, this essay is 100% human-made by me. No AI was used in the writing or the art, all of which are my original creations. – Jen