A few days ago, at the end of a long and hard-working and productive day, I got curious about Donald Trump and read a long and detailed profile of him in a national magazine. It took the better part of an hour, and then, at the end of that hour, I realized that I will be seeing and hearing about Donald Trump for a long time, perhaps as long as a year or so. Maybe longer. Lord, I thought.

This unnerved me, and I decided not to read anymore about Donald Trump or American politics for a good long while, it is early in the game and I don’t think I can bear a year of this. So I promised myself that I would organize a spiritual hour for myself, when the day’s work is done, I would go to the Round House Cafe, around 4 or 4:30 (I get up very early to write). I would bring my Iphone 6, some ear phones, two or three books, and a notepad.

I would call it the Trump Hour, the start of a new tradition, a spiritual hour to cap the day. I have always wanted this, never quite mustered the discipline to do it on a workday.

I would disconnect myself from the distractions of the world. The next day I went to the Round House. I ordered a medium iced decaf coffee, a ginger scone, and a brownie to take to Maria. I sat down in a corner of the cafe. I love the Round House, but I have never hung out in cafes. Back when I lived in Greenwich Village, there were cafes all over the place, but I got the idea that the people in them had nothing much to do, otherwise they would have been at work.

I was always at work, I had no time or money to sit in cafes and no one to go with. I think I resented cafes. I never understood why they were always full of people drinking coffee and talking.

Somehow, the notion of hanging out in a cafe seemed lazy to me, almost cowardly. Thomas Merton says that laziness and cowardice are the enemies of the spiritual life, so I got that into my head too. I always think I should be working, I always have work I need t do. I couldn’t be hanging around in cafes. So as much as I love the Round House, and as often as I eat there, it was all business.  I never once, in my whole life, hung out in a cafe. I came across a video of Donald Trump’s hair in a windstorm somewhere  in Iowa, and this mesmerized me. It convinced me that it was a good idea to to a cafe every day and never watch the news. I admit to being uneasy that it would stand up in the wind and we would all see what was under there.

You see, when I was a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News, my editor made me go to wig school for three  weeks so i could go around town and out all of the celebrities and politicians who were wearing wigs and pretending to have hair. My editor, a boozy Calvinist, if you can imagine, thought it was deceptive of people to wear wigs, he thought it was unnatural and hypocritical. So my job was to piss off all of these well known people by checking out their hair and exposing them. This changed my life, I can still spot a wig or a wave on TV or blocks away.

I wrote a long series about well known Philadelphia personalities who had wigs, I manged to tick off most of the politicians and celebrities in town. One of them took of his weave and tried to slap me with it.

I know what goes on  under that hair, I remembered the scene in Star Wars where Darth Vader has his mask taken off and that scared the wits out of me, I didn’t want to see it.  I think Trump’s hair has polish and super glue on it, it barely moved in a 50 mile-an-hour wind. I’ve never seen that.

I’ll be honest with you, I could easily have become obsessed with this, it could have messed me up and distracted me, and for months. I got to the Round House at  talked to Ashley, the counter girl, about her plans for college in  September. My friend Margaret came over to ask me what I was doing in a cafe in the afternoon, I had never been seen there. at that time A short, stocky woman from New Mexico with a big smile came over to say she hoped she wasn’t intruding, but she was visiting her sister in Vermont, she had read my books and the blog every day, and what were the chances of coming over to see Fate herd the sheep? Not good, I said, I was having my Trump Hour, my spiritual time. She looked at me in an odd way, and went quickly back to her table.

I squirmed a bit, I missed my big soft reading chair. I read three pages of a novel on my Iphone, then picked up a paper book.  Time passed slowly. My  butt got a bit sore, my back stiffened on the wooden chairs. I ate one of the flowers, Scott said I could.   I couldn’t stop wondering what I was doing there.

I felt as if people were looking at me, wondering why I had so much time on my hands,  why  I had nothing better to do than hang out in a cafe with my books? I expected one of the elderly women at the next table – they were looking at me and whispering – to get up and ask me if I was still writing.

Why was this better than my house? Maria was back  home, and I can always sucker Maria into taking a walk or visiting the donkeys, especially late in the day when she was usually bleary from hours on her sewing machine. At home, Red would sit by my feet and sigh. If Fate was in the house, she would come over to my chair, maybe bite my knee or my hand or bring me some strange thing she had pulled out of the wastebasket in the bathroom.

Why couldn’t I lean back in my chair at home and plug in my earphones and listen to Stevie Wonder or Bonnie Raitt or  Bob Marley or Kanye West in my phone? I couldn’t really justify it. There were a lot of distractions in the cafe, the espresso machine, dishes clanking in the kitchen, the door coming and going (I have to see who’s coming in.)

So I couldn’t do i t, I couldn’t settle quietly in the cafe and have my spiritual hour. I gathered my things and my fake iced coffee came home and took Fate and Red out to herd the sheep. I listened to Bob Marley for a half an hour. I sat in my chair and rocked back and forth and meditated. It was quiet, I could hear the sheep baaahing softly and hear the pony whinny every now and then. Red did come and sit by my feet and Fate did come and bring me one of Maria’s socks she had liberated from the clothes hamper.

I did snooker Maria into taking a walk with me, we sat and ate some melon together. Fate jumped into the animal’s water bucket and nearly drowned, we pulled her out in time. I had my Trump Hour, and it was good.  He is going to be around a long time, he will not drive me from my home. One day that hair will come off, and I do not want to see it.