Occasionally, I'm restless and after prayer, I often sit to write. Since I am dreading revising my novel, I often write little expositions such as this one about things that catch my eye:
He wears a straw hat that only hipsters and those prone to nostalgia would like. The reality is that he wears it out of necessity, not as a fashion statement. You might have guessed that it keeps the sun out of his eyes, and that is true. However it also keeps his enemies from knowing that it is he there in the coffee fields.
His shirt is neither gray nor white nor blue, but a combination of the three. Once upon a time it was striped all of these colors, but the sun and his sweat has blurred the lines that used to keep him sharp. The shirt is cotton, and keeps him covered and is still cool in the heat of the Caribbean sun. Rich kids in New York and L.A. will wear shirts like his, but they won’t have the stories behind the worn cloth. The truth is, he wouldn’t mind trying that life on for a day, if it wouldn’t mean leaving behind his plot of land, and his family.
His pants look like black denim, but the true story is that long ago they were his church pants. He wore those to say prayers for a successful season, and when the success did not come, he wore these pants out in the fields. He shrugs and says that the pants remind him to keep praying.
His arms tell us that he had woken up and gone to work, and that he will get up and go to work tomorrow. He wonders what it would have been like had he had the money to go to the medical school he had been accepted to, but he believes his children will enjoy that opportunity.
The coffee bag at his feet will be used to cover some chair in an urban coffee shop. The coffee shops that cater to those young and unmarried varones that joke about marriage but do not know what that sacrament means to a man like The Coffee Maker. He has been married since a birthday in his twenties to the same woman and has never actually cheated on her. He seeks to provide for her, even though she is talented enough to support her self and their children. His every step equals their security.
Who knows if he can read, or even if he enjoys that hobby? What you can know for sure is that he is up every day, tired or well rested, ill or healthy, a failure or a success. He does not waste his daylight hours. He doesn’t have time to waste. I’m sure he relaxes since all people find hobbies and interests. I couldn’t tell you what those were. Not even if I wanted to attempt to guess. Such men do this or that as they see fit and life goes on. But life is not always what you do in your free time. Like the wise men say, “Life is made up by days, how you spend your days is how you spend your life.”
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