EL CAFE

As if you weren't sick of it, but it is my summer project, no?

I've spent the last hour reading the guestbook, laughing and getting teary eyed, wondering what the hell happened to Ellis Paul and Don Con. I pretended that it was research for the start of my writing project, which I am starting to think it's unnecessary altogether because I could just publish the guest book, and it would tell the story better than I ever could. But what the hell, I've got nothing to do this summer but rearrange words so I will do my best to come up with something spectacular and perhaps steal from all of the hooligans who filled up the pages of this book.

It's not just all in my head though, there is some kind of magic here, I found it in this book right here. I don't think that we can take the credit for it really, but these vagabonds find some great comfort and homeliness here, and I only hope that I make my homes half as homely for whoever happens to wander in. My attachment to my home is not the building itself, though it seems that way. It is the people, but I know that once this building is gone, once we don't have this same set up the people will stop coming and our lives will be a lot lonelier. The american folk-music scene is small, tight knit, and rather lovely. The music itself is about the same. There is something so warm about it, and that is the best way to describe it.

To live in a place that so many people call home is the greatest, and I am sure the main source of my constantly nostalgic heart because it always feels like someone is missing. I always try to bring people home, to check out the place for themselves, but I am never quite sure if they quite get it, or if I ever quite get it, so I want to dedicate a portion of my summer writing to figuring out how to describe it. I keep wondering if it will even be interesting to anyone who is not associated with el cafe. People are easy to love and hard to forget.

I am not the only one who thinks that these walls are always talking (silently), "there are angels in the doorways" .

To sum it up: "this place is a wildlife refuge" DJD/ "this is the best homeless shelter I've ever been to"

We've always been happy to take in the strays, because perhaps we are all a little bit astray and we all need a place to call home. Because I was raised on love from these strays and from some of the more permanent fixtures in this place, I sometimes suspect that I have never known such a things as sadness, though my heart tells me otherwise. I love it here, not in a selfish narcissistic way, but in a communal sort of way.

Perhaps this is all the reason i never really think of my places as my own, why I am not over protective of my room, my bed, my spaces, only protective of my meals (because there was never any need to share your food around these parts).