Logbook 9: Was that a real dream?

As the logbook keeper at Lost Goat Coffee House, I have both a responsibility and a freedom to portray life at the coffee house thoroughly and honestly. I have been reading Immanuel Kant, and his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals has caught my attention and pricked my conscience. I'm troubled enough by Kant to want to help my readers distinguish fact from fiction, reality from dream. Feedback I've been getting (please see the Comments) suggests I should take more care to document and verify, as a good journalist would. Against this backdrop, some of the previous entries, especially the one immediately preceding this one, blur the line, and it's my duty to rectify, to the degree that I can.

I know it's not common for a man of the rails to study philosophy, but exposure to new ideas, especially aided by the stimulant of coffee, can provoke intellectual activity in the dullest of minds. Coffee houses have a rich history in bringing out the intellects (or some vague facsimile of them) in their patrons. For example, coffee houses had barely come on the scene in 17th century London before the monarch worried. An emissary of the king himself described his investigation this way: "In a coffee house just now among the rabble, I bluntly asked, which is the treason table?" To the delight of the growing number of patrons, coffee houses become known as "seminaries of sedition." Rome, too, was concerned, and at one point in the drink's colorful history, the papacy conspired to keep coffee from the mouths of the masses (and close to the Vatican chambers). Today Americans have at their disposal a coffee shop on nearly corner, so the potential for sedition is greater than ever. Is this a legitimate worry? My personal feeling as that as long as Americans take their "venti latte" to go, there is no need for political leaders to worry. Let them stop and talk, however, and the overthrow of some government -- any government -- is at hand.

It's this spectacle of color that has appeal at Lost Goat Coffee House, and I suspect that's what drew the actress Felicity Hunter. Our place is a stage where patrons linger and converse, and our customers are thespians of the highest caliber; no one knows if they're acting or for real. The prospect of financial success at Lost Goat Coffee House is presently limited; our enterprise is not embraced by the mainstream of Eden Hills. Instead, it seems to attract its shady underbelly, which has both the time and the inclination to gab. The rest are going somewhere, God knows where.

I have mentioned Immanuel Kant at the top of this entry, because it is his excellent work in the field of morality that influenced me prior to the visit to Miss Hunter's dressing room. I'm well aware that the experience related in Logbook 8 is, if not pure fantasy, at least on the edge of pure fantasy. In that entry, I had only recently awakened from a dream, inventoried my senses and was immediately involved in the problem of conveying a perfect latte to Miss Hunter's dressing room. The method of conveyance that I reported, in retrospect, appears to me to be too fantastic to be real. Could it have been merely my dream, and not an actual experience? I am troubled by this, because it is not my will to deceive. If my report on an event has somehow become so subjective as to include a dream, it's time I stepped back and assessed my faculties. For starters, I determined at least to learn the experience of Miss Hunter herself.

Miss Hunter is all about theater; all the world's a stage to her. When she called and ordered her 16-ounce latte, I found my opportunity. As soon as JR had prepared her favorite drink, I was off. I rehearsed my questions, thought about the moral implications of deceiving my readers, and commanded myself to discover and report the absolute truth.

At the Center for the Performing Arts at Lake Eden Landing I caught Miss Hunter in the midst of her preparation for performance. To my surprise, she didn't send me away in feigned embarrassment. Instead, she invited me to sit and watch.

"It's not easy , dahling," she said with wry self-effacement. "Being beautiful is not easy. It is not for the shy; not for the faint of heart. Courage! Courage to create. Courage to be."

She sat before the tri-view mirror at her dressing table, her face thoroughly scrubbed and ready. "It's a canvas," she said. "You shall see a work of art."

She tightened her dressing robe and pulled her copious red hair into a ponytail. A headband kept her bangs from her face. She used a pencil to shape and highlight her eyebrows. Then she took a tube from her table and squeezed a tad into her left hand.

"Concealer, dahling," she said. "It's the gesso, the basecoat." She applied it sparingly but with confidence, until her face took a unified hue, complementing her red tresses and covering freckles and blemishes.

"Voila!"

Using a flat, firm, slightly tapered brush, she applied a coating sufficient to neutralize undesirable colors. She had selected a faint pink tone, similar to her natural skin color but a touch darker, as stage makeup tends. She feathered the material gently outward.

"The cardnial rule, honey, is blend, blend, blend," she said. "Isn't it magic, Denis? I am flawless. I am artist. I am Picasso. No blems, dahling. No blems."

Feebly, I replied, "Yes, Miss Hunter. It certainly is amazing. Thank you!"

She finished with the concealer and began with the foundation. She divided her face into thirds and worked progressively on each. She started at the center of each section and worked the sponge outward in short strokes to the hair line, under her jaw, and down her tapered neck. The foundation set up as she worked, but she knew its characteristic. She worked with the fine hair on her face, gently pushing it aside with color until it disappeared. She inspected the angles of her face and used the make-up sponge to smooth and blend where needed. Then, in gentle, even strokes she applied a white-based cream pencil under her eyebrows, under her eyes, and down the length of her distinctive nose. She carefully blended every edge until there was absolutely no discernable line of white. She dusted her face with powder and sat perfectly still, her defined eyelids gently closed, until it set.

Suddenly she spoke. "There! Perfection! What do you say, Denis?"

I could say nothing, because there before me sat the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She gently let down her hair and brushed it smooth, the gorgeous red curls bouncing lightly on her shoulders, which she had bared. She applied lipstick and finishing touches to the liner around her eyes. Though I was but a few inches from her splendid face, I could see nothing of the paint she had brushed; no suggestion at all of deception. She had, in fact, taken her already fine face and transformed it into cover-girl perfection.

"No blems, Miss Hunter. There are absolutley no blems, ma'am. You're exquisite. Perfect."