Smack in the Middle And Coffee Please

I didn’t know how to introduce myself and then this happened.

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I walked into a cafe yesterday during a two-day stopover in Cancun (Cafe Por Favor) and saw a wall of hanging books. These books weren’t holding back. They were wide open and revealing themselves.

Well usually when you look at a collection of books, it’s not like that.

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Usually, books are facing away from you, closed shut, covered with either hard or soft cover, safely stuck on a shelf next to others, and perhaps hidden down some random aisle in some offbeat section, hoping like hell their title is enough of a golden hook to snag a curious spirit who wanders by.

Or maybe not, maybe they are looking away, hoping nobody tries to open them so they don’t have to risk being known. Maybe they fear their pages are blank.

Either way, books are normally waiting and withheld. Not wide open and willing.

But these books were different. They were leading with the soft guts of their pages. The only thing I couldn’t see was their protective covers. And I couldn’t read the titles, the shortcuts. I had to actually look into the things. Or, rather, I couldn’t help but to want to.

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So that got me thinking about people, about Strange Us and how we ache to be known. To be witnessed in our own weird little amazing ways.

How deep down, I think most of us want someone (or anyone or lots of someones) to pour over our pages and think they read like poetry. We want someone to not only notice the words we share, but the ones hidden between the obvious lines. The ones we didn’t write, on purpose.

We want someone to appreciate the texture of our paper and to ignore or accept the old dog-eared corners… and and we want them to dog-ear a few of our pages that they want to return to, again and again.

We want them to either appreciate or look past our plot twists, or perhaps to meet us somewhere inside of them, and walk with us. Maybe we want them to dare to be our plot twist.

We want them to love through the full-bodied fallibility of our character, even the traps she sets for herself, the ones everyone can see long before she does.

We want them to notice the subtle subtext and to appreciate the atmosphere of our presence, even when our mood changes too often and without warning, and throws the whole scene.

All the characters. All the subtexts. All the atmospheres. All the moods. All the wayward and winding plots. All the pages that trail off in middle of the paragraph. All the torn and crumpled ones. All the blank ones. And the rewritten ones. And the ones we can’t manage to keep between our flimsy covers, even when we try.

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We want them to say yes to all of that.

And we want them to read the whole damn thing cover to cover… and to get us.

And at the same time, we want them to know that even when they’ve read us 1000 times, a 100,000 even, hell a million, and they’ve memorized whole sections of us, they’ll never ever be able to get us.

We have to be read like an unsolvable mystery to be understood at all.

But we want someone to try to get us, anyway.

And we hope and wish they will let us in enough so we can do the same.

So I liked that about those books in a coffee joint called Coffee Please - the way they opened wide into the world, willing to bare themselves. The way they said, “Start here, right here, smack in the middle of me. Pick a page.”

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And well, I guess that’s why I’m here, to offer a page, now and again, smack in the middle of me. And to read yours, smack in the middle of you.

Which is to say, Hello.

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Welcome to Steem @aimeeonalimb. Feel free to follow me @kanasite and upvote. Cheers :). Also check out my latest post about blockchain https://steemit.com/steem/@kanasite/bitcoin-prices-plunged-will-it-rebound

Thank you for the welcome!

Welcome !! Nice to meet you. Follow each other and come see my blog and vote.

Hello Aimee,
I would like to welcome you to the Steemit community. It is a good thing you stopped for coffee and found the books open.
I myself spend a good amount of time welcoming people, this place takes some getting used too. My advise is think of this place as a two way street, there is traffic in both directions. Go play in the traffic, don't sit at the end of your drive way hoping people drop by once you get past the introduceyourself phase.
I see you followed me by your own accord, so I think you probably grasp what I mean. If I can be of any assistance to you just drop me a note.
There are plenty of groups associated with several different points of interest on here, find some and make yourself know in those that interest you.
I write a blog called, Daily Dose of Sultnpapper, stop by and check it out sometime if you care to. I will check back on you in a week or so, in the mean time, explore this new world of Steemit.com
Until next time,
@sultnpapper

Hi @sultnpapper, I appreciate your time, your advice and your sleuth work. And yes, I know @buttcoins who introduced me to Steemit. But what I loved is he told me what you wrote about why you're on Steemit in the first place, and when he told me, he said it was the best reason he'd ever heard from anyone. And well, I had to agree about the beauty. It was a pretty damn good reason. Thanks for your welcome. <3

I always make it a point to reach out to people when they follow me, so I didn't catch what had happened at first, it took me a little bit to put it together. It is a pleasure to meet you, @buttcoins is a great guy and I appreciate him telling you my story. If you care to read it for yourself I've attached a link here, https://steemit.com/blog/@sultnpapper/daily-dose-of-sultnpapper-11-20-17-the-story-of-a-selfish-old-man-sultnpapper , I gather that you will be sharing your stories and based on the fact that BC is a mutual friend I followed you so I can keep up with your work.
Normally I don't follow people straight out the shoot, I usually check back and see what they produce, after a month or so if I like what I see then I will click the follow button so you are an exception in the land of @sultnpapper.
If we don't see each other on here before Christmas let me wish you a Merry Christmas right now, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I read it! I was thinking about how I wrote about our desire to be known and what you are talking about is your desire to be known, or for your future grandchildren to know something of their grandfather. So in a way, the blockchain for you is like the open book on that wall. And well, I think that's a pretty neat circle. Happy Holidays to you too xoxo

Great start @aimeeonalimb a page in the middle...may you find many great unsolvable mysteries....and write them as well.

I didn't know this was one of your ladies until I saw you show up in the comments. Then I went and looked where she was from, small world. My random work at greeting and I land smack on top of your neighbor, what do you think the odds were on that prior to it happening?
Wait just a minute, this woman found me, did you have something to do with this, I know you did, now that I put 2 and 2 together and came up with five.

a wise old goat...nothing slips by you... actually i am very soon going to make a post about the folks i have brought to steemit.... and Aimee is amazing.. she runs writers workshops here at the lake...i have been harassing her for a while. finally just last week the day before i left... we had a little meeting and i gave her a low down on tooling around and posting... she is a great writer so i had her follow 4 or 5 of my favorite writers i had found on steemit. you were on that short list...so yeah...it is no kwinky dink.

Well I am honored to be on that list. Thanks.

Thanks you @buttcoins. I'll meet you somewhere fallen, in those cracks of time. :-)