September 1, 2014
I slept
way too long last night. I could come up with some dry excuse as to why, like
the trash truck was so loud emptying the dumpsters at 7am that it threw off my
sleep cycle, but honestly it was because I was too bored to wake up. I have to
whittle away the hours somehow. But I paid for the excessive slumber because I’ve
had a pounding head all day, primarily behind my right eye, and no amount of
coffee, tea, or cleaning the apartment will rid me of it.
The
moment comes where I can be inside no longer. I love this little space, with
the rickety, soundless fan running the cool September air from the open windows
into the tiny living room, and the floors that creak monstrously, and the glass
doorknobs that look like crystal chandelier pieces, and the bathroom sink that
has a faucet for hot water and a faucet for cold water, rendering me into
moments of rapid decision making, situational awareness and site evaluation as
I must decide which water temperature is most important and most bearable at
that exact instant. But when my fingers are raw from the iron guitar strings,
and my eyes swollen from the screen of my computer, and the kitchen floor clean
enough to eat off of, I must leave.
I go to
this coffee shop just around the block. I hate it, but I’ve been there twice
now. I sit at the counter bar at the picture window overlooking the street. I
bring a notebook that I know I won’t write in, but I have to bring it anyway
just in case I get the sudden notion to write. Mostly I read, because when I
sit in this coffee shop, it is because I have grown tired of how things are and
I need a change of scenery. Jack Kerouac has been my latest change of scenery,
although in a way there’s no change at all because sometimes I see myself as
the Sal Paradise of this own life I’m living. I guess it’s less like a change of
scenery and more like a walk with a friend. But as I read, this dumb café blasts
modern pop songs over the radio, with just enough R&B to give me a minor
existential crisis. A coffee shop in Suicide City should not be playing music
with a beat you’d hear at a department store on the East Coast. It just seems
so wrong to me, but I’ll go back tomorrow probably.
Anyway, then
I check my phone and wonder who to text, but everyone out East is sleeping, and
I’m not sure what we’d talk about anyway, so I put the phone down and go back
to reading until it’s time to go home, and so I go home. They say the sunsets
are good here. I think they’re right. I can see the clouds illuminated on the
bits of the horizon visible past the city buildings as I walk, and I wish I
could see it. Funny how the sun still sets here. But the fresh air is good; it
abates my headache for a few minutes, so I sit down on a step outside of a little
restaurant that looks alive, but I have yet to see open. I sit there looking at
a car parked on the curb in front of me. I check my phone. Still no one to
call. I fancy myself to be someone quite deep and pensive to be seated on such
a curb at such a time as this, and I try to imagine Kerouac writing about Sal
in such a place, but then I realize what waste of time it is and I stand up and
I keep walking back to the flat.
I’m
hungry when I get home, and that frustrates me, because I really want to write
(Kerouac can do that to you) but I’m also frustrated because I can’t write like
Kerouac, so then I make food. I have three eggs, a bagel and a half, three
apples, some cheese wedges, and this delicious raspberry-grape juice. I throw
together scrambled eggs and cheese on a bagel. I go back to the table to write
while it’s cooking, but I keep getting writer’s block, so then I go back to the
stove and flip the eggs even though they’re still runny. I just need to do
something sometimes.
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