Drinking coffee in the gazebo, listening to The Contortionist's new EP Our Bones, reading my own words as I do a little subcontracted fiction writing for a guy who sometimes needs my touch but you'll never hear him thank me out loud. Sometimes gigs are crushing but still lucrative and I never had a soul to sell for so long it seemed easy to give away chunks of the carnival in my mind for a song or a fat cheque or a pat on the head, doesn't matter which.
I am usually the most impressed with the things I come up with anyway, overall.
Lochlan watches me from the patio steps, right by the door in the shade. My very own carnival in human form. I take another dutiful bite of the apple-jelly toast he brought out for me, washing it down with a gulp of ice-cold gritty coffee from a cup I've been keeping close for several hours now. It's absolutely terrible and yet I'm proving a point. He doesn't need to hover.
I write a few more paragraphs and now I'm faking drinking coffee as it's empty, grinds travelling up the inside of the cup like a waterfall of dirt that eventually dried up in the sun. No one is going to hike back to see this marvel of nature, that's for sure. No one's going to invest kilometres of energy to stand in awe of the raw power of grinds sweeping over a ceramic vessel with a perfect blue-red lipstick print at the top. It's not Instagrammable. It's not wondrous. It's as pedestrian as one can get and you'll never see it but it still exists and that's somehow the important part today.
It's quiet and easy and not beautiful. The opposite of everything we reach for, everything we want, as always.
Oh, here he comes. Old eagle-eyes (blind as a bat these days) knows I'm faking and so I suppose my time here is up.
I am usually the most impressed with the things I come up with anyway, overall.
Lochlan watches me from the patio steps, right by the door in the shade. My very own carnival in human form. I take another dutiful bite of the apple-jelly toast he brought out for me, washing it down with a gulp of ice-cold gritty coffee from a cup I've been keeping close for several hours now. It's absolutely terrible and yet I'm proving a point. He doesn't need to hover.
I write a few more paragraphs and now I'm faking drinking coffee as it's empty, grinds travelling up the inside of the cup like a waterfall of dirt that eventually dried up in the sun. No one is going to hike back to see this marvel of nature, that's for sure. No one's going to invest kilometres of energy to stand in awe of the raw power of grinds sweeping over a ceramic vessel with a perfect blue-red lipstick print at the top. It's not Instagrammable. It's not wondrous. It's as pedestrian as one can get and you'll never see it but it still exists and that's somehow the important part today.
It's quiet and easy and not beautiful. The opposite of everything we reach for, everything we want, as always.
Oh, here he comes. Old eagle-eyes (blind as a bat these days) knows I'm faking and so I suppose my time here is up.