Rubik's Cube Romance. Feb. 08

Working as a barista at a local, privately owned coffee shop, encountering the most anomalous of people is not foreign to me. Who I see daily ranges from ornery, overworked, caffeine deprived office-men, to remarkably obese children coming in with their remarkably obese parents to each get 24 ounce milkshakes (with the whip cream on top, of course). The coffee shop’s most unfaltering demographic consists of the lonely pariahs of society who’s only friends are the other exiles who meet there on a regular basis to get their daily fix of affection before returning home to their despondent, cat filled homes. We get normal folk in there all the time also, but they’re not the regulars.

A couple came in yesterday afternoon. This couple, probably in their early thirties, was so farcically coherent compared to the majority of our customers that I hadn’t even noticed their presence until I went out to check the lobby a few hours after they got their drinks. I couldn’t even recall making their drinks. The stun of finding them there caught me off guard, so I lingered a moment trying to resurface some memory of them ordering. They must have ordered in between two tetchy or disheveled customers and slipped by without my acknowledgement. (I find it humorous that the rational, quiet, and supposed “normal” people who come in are considered atypical in my experience there.)

I returned to my station and completed my duties before closing shop at seven and turning up the volume on the stereo, but I was hardly focused on the tasks at hand. All I could think about was that couple. Not due to the shock factor they’d given me earlier, but because of something else I had observed when I saw them. They were playing with a Rubik’s Cube- the wretched interchangeable box that dubs its challengers either ingenious or insane. The female sat on her side of the old, wooden table-for-two holding the device and analyzing the moves that needed to be made. The male, on the opposite side, sitting with his left ankle crossed over his right knee, held the instructions to the dismal game while attempting to direct his partner-in-crime on what portion to rotate next. I never saw if the two ever accomplished matching all of the colors on each side during their three hour stay, but that wasn’t imperative.

My mind wasn’t consumed with the haunting obscurities of the Rubik’s cube, but rather the couple’s ability to sit at a coffee shop for three hours and never tire of each others’ company. The look in their eyes and the tone in their voices made it obvious that they were rather enjoying their nothing-time, so long as they were together, making it brilliant. “Brilliant-nothing-times” are the moments in our lives that are only enjoyed and offer remarkable memories and emotions because of the person(s) it is spent with. Brilliant-Nothing-Time (BNT) can occur in absolutely any form, for example: sitting at a coffee shop, riding in a car, taking a walk, flying in a plane, camping in the mountains, grocery shopping, playing in the snow, skipping class, watching a movie, attending church, taking a bike-ride, climbing a tree, participating in any sport/game, or doing absolutely nothing. My point, if vague, was that the outcome of nothing-time merely depends on who one’s with. Any moment of any day in someone’s life could be made futile or marvelous, solely relying on the relations between the beholders of the moment.
The prospect of true love- between man and woman, father and daughter, a child and his pet, or even between complete strangers- depends on the ability to make nothing-time brilliant. To truly love someone (to varying degrees of ‘love’, simply in the truest form achievable), one must sincerely appreciate and take pleasure in the exclusivity of sitting next to another and having nothing else to occupy their attention.

I’m not sure where I was headed when I brought up Word. All I could think of for a day was, “Rubik’s cube Romance.” I intermittently lose my sense of reality and give into the humanistic hunger for camaraderie and intimacy. In my 18 years of subsistence, I’ve decided mankind’s greatest fear is loneliness. Where one is twenty years from now could be either atrocious or magnificent in accordance with the level of affection in their life. It’s when I step back and look at the significance of the big picture that I’m able to detox that unhealthy urge for fleeting, fear-driven love from my mind. Though I’m skeptic that I’ll ever find someone who could make my nothing-time brilliant every day for the rest of my life, I’m not one to settle, and I don’t believe in the coercion of love. If it exists for me, my painstaking patience will have paid off. I don’t hold Hollywood-romance expectations in the least, though you can’t blame a girl for dreaming. All I’m waiting for is someone I can sit at a coffee shop for three hours with and not want to be anywhere else. I’ll know when it’s bona fide when that sensation is renewed every morning after.