I can really measure my life in coffee spoons. Here I sit again. In a café when a fresh cup of medium roast before me. It could be anywhere. Yet today it’s the Blue Line Café in the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha. Perhaps their suprisingly successful attempt at an urban youthful neighborhood with hipsters and beards and community gardens, microbrews and vintage shops selling floral blouses just recently pulled out of Grandmother Gertie’s closet. Slow jazz and gingham dresses and open mac books. We’re resting on the edge of reality folks. This is Omaha, Nebraska. Corn country. Cattle country. And the mega of metropolitan culture and avant-garde. Or perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Give it a double shot of espresso and light years into the future and perhaps we’re looking at something radically different. But now my coffee is cold and the rain outside isn’t looking like much. Yet I like what I see, and I must admit the Crabbies Ginger beer at the Dundee Dell threw me back to Prescott’s Liqueur Deli nights with herb-infused flatbread pizza, gooey mozzarella and roasted tomato. And walking around the relatively quiet streets this morning, gawking at the warm brick homes and meticulously mowed, green lawns made me feel strangely familiar and at home with this city in the plains. After all, I entered this world screaming and naked in Omaha Nebraska one early October morning. Perhaps it’s the faintest, closest thing to home I could ever ask for. And the rose garden in memorial park cautioned me that life was too short and I really should just lie down in the grass, and watch the clouds slowly creep across the sky.