“By the time I reached the coffee-shop door … my self-confidence had collapsed. Panic had taken its place. I believed I was the ugliest, dirtiest little old bum in Manhattan. If I went into the coffee shop, everybody would be nauseated. They would throw me out and tell me to go to the Bowery where I belonged.

“But I somehow found the courage to go in anyway—and imagine my surprise! It was as though I had died and gone to heaven! A waitress said to me, 'Honeybunch, you sit right down, and I’ll bring you your coffee right away.' I hadn’t said anything to her.

”So I sit down, and everywhere I looked I saw customers of every description being received with love. To the waitresses everybody was 'honeybunch' and 'darling' and 'dear.' It was like an emergency ward after a great catastrophe. It did not matter what race or class the victims belonged to. They were all given the same miracle drug, which was coffee. The catastrophe in this case, of course, was that the sun had come up again.“

--Walter F. Starbuck in Kurt Vonnegut's 1979 novel, ”Jailbird"; pp. 165-66

My morning. Book by Kurt Vonnegut, pottery by Ingrid Sundstrom, keyboard by Apple.

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