Touch Wood

Words.

Words which once rolled, fluid, effluent, as gin pours from the crystal carafe, roll raggedly now, like rust on the chain, or sand in the eye.  The blogger box, which once framed my nightly ritual, night after night for four and a half years, is familiar yet distant.  Alliteration, it seems, still seeps sleekly from the keys.  

Dita desires to take, yet again, your drink order.  Scarlett is crushing the ice.  Your bartender is back, running his hand along the long wooden bar top.

The wood feels fine, solid, patient.  It's been here all along.

Professionals in this, our automated environs, digitally sanitized, service-oriented, are left, bereft, of the tangible product of their labor.  We have nothing but bare statistics to show what we have wrought.  We must, thus, touch wood, touch life, touch the fiber of creation, and reconnect to the soil.

This place, this potent place of pretentious pandering and foppery, base discourse, and drunken rambling is as wooden and natural as electronic social media allows.

Your bartender surveys the familiar scene.  Old faces may be gone.  New faces are now expected to take their place.  What truths?  What smut? What wicked tales of woe?

Bar's open.  What can I pour ya?