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You learn to live with the darkness. The morning commute carries the fog with it and you learn to love it like you learn to love your own pitiful existence. You cherish your morning drive with your coffee and your silence because its the only time when you can see everything spinning out before you. All other times of the day, you're caught in the fog of living and working. That's a place you truly can't see anything in.

The fog is everywhere in this tiny town. The streets, little more than alleys, are traversed by pedestrians, bikers, and the mist. All of them have somewhere to be. The mist just gets there first, making everything bleak. You could easily get lost in it if not for the shouting of other people, voices like a fog horn calling you back to the shore, or a mother calling for her children in the dark, or a shepherd herding his sheep through the night.

The cafe is where you head first. Why? Because everyone does. Starbucks is more a symbol than an actual convenience and coffee just goes to show everyone that you're tired and successful because you're tired. There's not enough caffeine in it to have any effect except the effect of a first impression as the other customers watch you order your tall Pike's Place Roast with cream and two sugars. They got the cappuccino. You're much cooler than they are.

Everyone talks in a coffee shop. They talk over the din of the grinder, the espresso machine and the drive through window. They talk over everyone else talking. They talk over the sound of their own voice. They talk because if they didn't there would be silence. Silence is stillness. Stillness causes you to cease moving and makes you think. That would be painful. So you talk. And from inside your cocoon your voice sounds upbeat and happy. From outside, the voices mingle into a din of hopeless calling. Cafes are sad places if you're not inside them and sadder places if you are in them.

It's a college town, you know. Lot's of bookstores, lots of music shops, a gamers collective somewhere down the street that you've never been to but you've heard its fun and you've been meaning to go there. You don't belong there. You're preppy. But in college the nerds are cooler than you. So you try and be like them. The world's upside down, just like it should be.

There's a lot of culture in a college town. The independent cafe has karaoke where your best friend's boyfriend's roomie's best friend is a singing god. They say he'll get a record deal when American Idol sees fit to come to the coast. They won't ever see fit to come to the coast. The fog's too thick. There's a slam poetry event a few blocks away from the used bookstore where you buy your mystery novels and thrillers. Aren't you so posh? You read that tattooed girl book. Was it good? You don't remember. It just looked good in your hand. The cover artists for paperbacks these days are amazing. Someday you wanna see your own book in that bookstore. But only after you're famous.

The poets line up in the front row because that's where they can see their competition best. It's all about noting who's better than you and glaring at them, hoping to make them mess up their delivery. It never works. The poet is more a god than you can ever be. He stands before you, creating something out of nothing, putting an image in your head where once there was only the void of voices left over from the Starbucks of the morning. That moment is a communion as his heart reaches your brain. It's a sacramental moment. It's a holy, holy thing. The clapping is an unspoken language that isn't good enough. Your tears are better, but you're ashamed of them and so they remain unshed.

In this town, you have to find a way to live. The pittance you make at your on campus job is worthless. Maybe you'll take up prostitution in your spare time? That's culture for you.

It's Sunday and you're asleep. There isn't anything to wake you up. They don't allow churches to ring their bells anymore. It wakes too many people up. But sometimes you hear them, reminding you that you have a duty to your soul as well as to your mind. Phantom bells. They're nice when you hear them. And then they stop and the silence is overbearing. The fog has everything covered, like the blanket you just left. You sit and wonder when this is all going to end. The homework piles up on your desk. Your girlfriend is mad at you because she doesn't love you. Your parents want you to cure cancer. You have no idea what you want. It would be nice if this would all end and then you remember the bottle of pills in your medicine cabinet. A lot of those would solve every problem. Endless peace after a glass of water. Paradise. That's a Canaan that church doesn't tell you about. They want you to take the long way round. But the effort is just too much for you to put into anything anymore.

Maybe you'll just go back to Starbucks.