Narcissistic and in a small fit of “my gut knows better,” I ignored the 54 degrees Fahrenheit temperature sworn by my iPhone app and the charged current of sunshine that poured into and warmed my apartment and I girded myself for the winter before a six-block walk to New Wave Coffee. New brown leather boots I loved dearly with faux fur lining. Tall socks that climbed half up my calves. Sturdy black tights that I got from Sara under a layer of dark denim that I got from Stephen. A red, plaid shirt under a wool hoodie under a thick green jacket that never failed me on the days the wind blew snow in circles. It was not so warm a day that I would break a sweat during the race to caffeine oasis, but it was exactly so warm a day that I would break one instantly upon setting foot into the cafe at the finish line. I struggled to catch breath that I didn’t even know I’d lost. The shop’s thermostat was girded for winter as well.
On the way, I listened to a reading of a novel I have read twice already and thought about my future. It isn’t politics, is it? I never thought the day would come when I would be tired of it, but I am very tired lately.
I write too. Often for money and without joy. I have recently begun writing things for myself again, but writing hours are feast or famine, and the joys of one and the agonies of the other annihilate each other like matter/anti-matter as far as my peace of mind is concerned.
(the music in New Wave today is good enough to make me crave a strong drink)
There is a reason that I love that book and that is because every sentence of it moves or repulses me completely. It took me six months to read through the first time I tried. I had to stop reading every few paragraphs—I had to actually close the book and hold it out at arm’s length or set it on the floor and walk away. I was that sick and in love for 470 pages and six months. Even listening to it on the walk, distracted and thinking about myself, every line half-heard gave me three new ideas for the things I would write when I reached my destination—this fucking book, this vault for every good and horrible notion I will ever have.
Once inside New Wave, sweating or whatever, winded or whatever, purchasing my coffee more by then as a genuflection toward the shop that hosted me, I could hardly contain myself. I felt giddily, hyper-lucid but floating around in a series of moon-jumps as though inflated with just the right amount of helium to keep me Earthbound but fun. I needed to write, as drearily familiar as that sounds. That is why I do it, I must accept: writing well just gets me high. It gives me fevers and chills at the same time. That rather simplifies things, doesn’t it? That rather ends the inner debate. People don’t get high because of cost-benefit analyses, people get high because high. Regardless of what I decide about myself, I’m just going to keep writing anyway. At this point, it is out of my hands.
One more thing: on the walk over while I’m mostly checking myself out in the reflective, tinted windows of the restaurants on the corner—there are things I just haven’t had opportunity to comprehend about my gait—I catch an older black gentleman swerving grandly on the wide sidewalk and coming my way. Grandly? Well, he seemed pleased with himself, anyway. He seem to own the sidewalk. With a scrutinizing look, I suspect I would have noticed by the qualities of his face, sweater, overcoat and boots that he was homeless, mentally infirm or drunk, or at least very unstylishly poor. He was black, however, and when they are old and black I try not to look with much scrutiny at all. I blame that on my youth, my blackness, my enthusiasm for alcohol and occasionally bouts with severe depression, and my cultivated, stylish poverty.
The man took a sudden glance across the street as if he were surprised to find it there, and decided to cross right where he was. The thing is that even though Chicago has been warmer for a few days and most of the curb is now thawed and dry from the snow and ice that was an inconvenient constant for the preceding four months, he happened to have turned right parallel to a spot that was inexplicably hampered by two inches of deep black slush. I watched with horror as he took his first step towards it. Surely he will maneuver a foot to the right or left and avoid it entirely, I thought. He took another step. The third step was faster than the first two so before I had time to make my peace with it, there he was right in the slush. Then he stepped out into the street and out of my frame of view.
He was exactly who I thought he was, I could not help but decide, because no one else would be so indifferent about their shoes.
Currently listening to:
