black ceilings

I spend quite a bit of time at coffee shops and bookstores where wifi is readily available (and free). At a certain coffee chain, if you take the time to observe your surroundings (particularly those above you) you’ll notice vaulted black ceilings. The air ducts and various other vitals are right there overhead, exposed except for their melanin makeup. I have been to this chain many times and to this specific store quite a bit, but I hadn’t really taken note of this anomaly above until very recently. The peculiarity of these darkly painted parts struck me as ingenious and, in fact, quite appropriate in some nebulous way for a generally mellow and congenial java house. As aforementioned, the adust sky-scape doesn’t draw your immediate attention, but should you happen to glance up, there’s a subtle, gothic grandeur about the whole thing – medieval meets Manhattan, or cathedral hooks up with cool house blues. As I ponder it, I realize that I’m truly attracted to the abstract union of these two conceptions. The appeal, I think, has to do with the epic ideal embedded in the one, and the community concept at least latent in the other. When these two meet in real life, the result moves us beyond mere ambiance into the intersection of the sacred and the secular, of the transcendent and the imminent, of the prayer and the party. Despite what the Enlightenment espoused, human is not comprised of separate parts, but rather we embody concentricity on all levels. Community is connected to cosmic and epic dovetails with down to earth kind of like vaulted black ceilings fade into the fellowship found in laidback lounges.