Margot E. Leidolf

The Art of Becoming (Part I)

Cowardice… indifference… self-deprecation. Ingrid was sat indoors at a café, bohemian in aesthetic more than atmosphere, drinking her overpriced iced chai latte as she tried to understand how she came to be this dull, dry, mediocre excuse for a human being. She decided that it was probably a combination of the three; cowardice being the superior of the vices. She frequented this café; ordered the same drink and stereotyped the employees in her mind as vegans, Instagram poets, ceramists, kombucha brewers, and occasionally someone that looked to be a Renaissance man/woman possessing the knowledge and capacity for all of those things. Ingrid used the phrase generously, the Renaissance being a birthing of new art, literature, and forms of thinking; the current culture produced memes. This was mostly born of bitterness. These people might represent subculture clichés to her, but they exuded free-spirited wild flowers. Ingrid was a wall flower living in her mind wallpapered with what-ifs.