The Marx Cafe

What the Blind May Dream

I lost power at my home in D.C. yesterday morning. I woke up to a Flash Flood alert on my phone. The rain was so heavy that I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house. By 11am, it looked like 11pm. 

I’ve been in low spirits lately—the constant drip of content content content, the tragedy in Afghanistan, and the ethical incoherence over the virus have given me a kind of Kierkegaardian existential angst. 

I needed to write, but I didn’t want to write alone in the dark. I needed to be around other people, but not talk to them. 

I grabbed an umbrella and made it all the way to the Marx Cafe, a hole-in-the-wall bar with food about a 10-minute walk from where I live. (Look: I won’t not patronize a place merely because of its name. I’ve walked by the establishment several times and could make out a magical-looking bar through the partially-fogged up windows. The story I’ve told myself is that it’s owned by conscious capitalists, or woke capitalists, or capitalist’s capitalists, or newly minted Bitcoin …