Saturday was beautiful, but I didn't know what to do. I have dug myself a deep rut, really, and keep wearing the path deeper and deeper. Here and there, however, are a few rivulets that, though drying up, will let me find a way back out. I took one I used to take from time to time. After reading and writing to you, I put on long pants for the first time in at least a year, grabbed a hoodie, and loaded one of my Leicas with color film on a lark. I was headed to breakfast.
I sat at the counter overlooking the kitchen per usual. Three of the waitresses came up to tell me it was nice to see me again. I could never be a good criminal, I think. I am, apparently, too memorable. I am being modest, though, or cagey, for I believe in my shriveled little soul that they like flirting with me. It is not, in all honesty, a particularly pretty crowd. I like to believe I add a little Bohemian savoir faire.
Three eggs, over medium, bacon, grits, and an English muffin.
"Do you want some coffee, hun?"
"Milk. I want to see how much cholesterol my heart can take."
"Large or small?"
"Let's make it a small unless you know CPR."
Her eyes popped as if to say she would do it.
I watched the waitresses while I waited. They chat incessantly about the silliest of things. It seems they are a happy lot. They know one another's lives intimately. They laugh and bump one another with their hips to make a point. They have an enviable sense of community, or so it seems.
After breakfast, back in the parking lot, I wonder what to do. I decided I would go to the crazy warehouse place without a sign that sells small home goods, candles, dried flowers, potted plants. . . I'd buy some little thing for the house.
When I got there, though, the place was dark. It was empty. They were gone. WTF? It had been a venue place hosting fashion shows, weddings, pop-up restaurants. . . . What happened.
It seemed to me then a bad omen. Some of the magic was gone from my little life. I pointed my car without much verve toward the burgeoning hipster part of town around the Cafe Strange. As I drove by the cafe, I could see that the parking lot and side street were packed. Hmm. I guessed that people went there for coffee and muffins. I drove past, crossed the street, and pulled into the little, weird strip shopping center, found a spot and parked, and walked into the CD and Vinyl shop. Long, long ago, it had been owned by a couple I knew, but they had divested long ago. One aisle of the shop is devoted to books and zines. The selection is really very good, stocked with some classics and lots of beat stuff, and there are odd, eclectic surprises as well. Goddamnit, though, I needed my reading glasses in the dimly lit room. I need to get one of those little jewelers things to hang around my neck. But I squinted enough to see o.k. I've been ordering all my books online, and quickly, browsing through the titles, I was excited and happy.
I picked up a book, "Florida." It had been a National Book Award finalist in 2018, the cover proudly exclaimed, and the author lived in my old college town. I vaguely remember reading about it, I thought. I put it under my arm and kept browsing. Patti Smith's "Just Kids," had won a National Book Award. This went under my arm, too. There were many titles I wanted, but I had to put the governor on. I scanned a rack of small zines and thought I should make one myself. Hell, yea. I could refashion some of my blog entrees--with photos. The thought intrigued me. There were several little hipster places that would sell them. Just a thought. I looked through encyclopedias of mushrooms, children's books about Taylor Swift. . . I'm not kidding. . . and all sorts of compendiums of weird and strange things. There were packages of dice of many kinds. I thought to by the "Fuck That" dice. One die had "Fuck" imprinted differently on all facets, the other words like "it" and "that" and "you," etc. The package explained the meaning of each and how it would shape your decision. I thought to buy them but put them back for future fun. I picked up an Antiquarian Sticker Book Imaginarium. It was a big book, thick and heavy. Inside were odd images from the Victorian era. Were they stickers? I rubbed my fingers over them, but they felt flat. Then I curled a page and the edge of one of them lifted. Holy smokes--they were. I couldn't resist. It was just plain good weirdness. There was a section with boxes of cards. Tarot, of course, and many others, but my eye was drawn to "The Spells Deck." Really?
"78 Charms, Remedies, and Rituals for the Modern Mystic." It was the stuff to bolster my reputation as a shaman with the gymroids. . . and maybe others. It went into the pile.
At the last minute, given what is happening with Cormac McCarthy's reputation, I picked up "Stella Maris," one half of his last publication. It was the skinnier of the two. If I liked it, I would go back and get "The Traveller."
When I checked out, the total shocked me, but I was feeling pretty groovy. I put the books in my car and strolled on down the sidewalk, stopping into various places. An antique clothing and hipster furniture store. A fly fishing shop. A craft brewery. The weather was nice. Down the street was a nursery. I want to redo my dilapidated garden. I stopped in to see what I might be able to plant in the southern winter.
When I got back into the car, I pointed it in a southern direction toward Gotham, but I decided to turn eastward toward a growing hip part of town where a bunch of new apartments have grown up that house a largely twenties and early thirties population. New restaurants and bars have grown up around them. It is exactly where I was run over on my Vespa, but as I've formerly reported, I have not real PTSD and do not have trouble driving past. I surely wish it hadn't happened. . . but what can you do?
I turned down a street running parallel to the big lake toward another warehouse shop owned by the same people who ran the other place that was closed. I wondered if this one would be closed, too. It was even bigger than the other. I had been there only once, and really could not figure out what it was. One enters at a bar and food counter that hadn't been open last time I was there and was not open now. Through an entrance, you enter the giant, multi-level warehouse full of. . . it is hard to say. Bric a brac and furniture, basically. I stood for a moment before entering and heard someone call, "Hello." I stuck my head around the corner and saw a woman. Otherwise, the place was empty.
"Hi," I said.
"Is this your first time here?"
"I was here once before."
It turned out that she was the owner. I told her I had gone to the other place and was surprised to find it gone. She started explaining her business woes and then wanted to show me around. She needn't as the place was one open space and everything was in sight. She pointed out the giant ceiling to floor windows that opened up to the street and the lake below.
"I had those put in," she said, obviously proud. She took me out through the back of the building to show me the garden where they lit fire pits.
"When do you do that?"
It was all very vague. Like the other place, there was no sign advertising this giant enterprise. People either knew or they didn't. She told me about her sixteen feral cats.
"I think you should rent me a part of this for a studio," I ventured. Her brow furrowed.
"I don't know if I would be allowed to." She started talking about the book thick rental agreement that came with the place, but I was thinking she was merely putting me off. Then she confessed she was thinking of closing the shop for good. She was tired, she said. It was too much work. She had lost almost all of her help. She was having trouble making her nut. She had run many businesses. She and her husband had just opened up a brewery on the other side of town. She staged events for most of the businesses in the area. She did flowers, made sets. She did pop up shops. We talked about many things and people and found we knew many of the same ones. She was well connected and told me tales of her early days when Gotham was hopping with the birth of the electronic music scene. We talked, I imagine, for two hours. A few customers came and went, but she always came back to the conversation. I liked her. I thought she was swell.
But I had been there a long, long time, so I said I would tell one more story and then go. It was a good story, and she asked me my last name and wrote it down. I asked hers.
The day was still beautiful, perfect, really, and I had experienced a little magic. I don't get out enough, don't get around, but today I was filling the tank of creativity a bit. I was full of ideas and excitement.
I tooled around awhile before heading back to the house. I stopped at the grocers to buy some quartered turkey for Thanksgiving. I was going to soak it in a buttermilk brine mixture overnight, then wipe them clean and bake them in the oven. They would cook fairly quickly. The buttermilk brine tenderizes the turkey so that it falls from the bones. I've done it a couple times before. It is the best and easiest way I know to cook a Thanksgiving dinner.
I decided to buy a bottle of champagne. Roderers. The day was still sparkling at three. I wanted to sit on my deck, drink some champs, and smoke a cheroot while I thought over the day before I went to see my mother. I poured it into a lovely coupe glass and lit the cheroot. The cat joined me, so I gave her a bowl of food.
I had an idea. I texted Q. I told him I met a woman who was connected in some way with the guy who owned the clubs in Gotham and was responsible for the big electronic music scene. Q cut his DJ chops there with Sasha and Digweed and Jimmy somebody who was a DJ and a booking agent. It was right here in my own hometown that the whole thing began. So I have said before, but I get corrected. I don't really know what I am talking about because I was never enamored of the scene. Really. . . EDM, Daft Punk, Rave. . . no, I don't really know any of it. But Q was here at the heart of something and later DJed at Twylo in NYC and in cities around the world.
I texted him.
"I met a woman named J C today. She and I talked for hours. I was in her big warehouse home goods shop. She knew everybody here, had been a player forever. Your age. She knew what’s his name who owned all the clubs when you were staring out in the electronic music scene. I’ll bet dollars to donuts you knew her. Could have had a different last name then."
He did, he said. He sent me a photo of her from back then. Holy smokes--she was a real knockout. Man, I thought, it's a small small small small world.
I went to see my mother. She has not been feeling well for a long while now. She looked fairly miserable. We sat and talked in the cooling afternoon air, but my energy was flagging knowing there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. When I left her, I had all the ailments from which she was suffering.
When I got home, I was tired. My body ached. The enchantment of the day was leaving me. I wanted to have a drink and chat with someone, but there was no one, and I began to feel the void. All the ideas of the afternoon were leaving me. Was I sick? I felt sick. I would struggle to stay up awhile, but I knew early I would take one of the pain pills I have stored up for one bad day and I would go to sleep. I wanted to be narcotized.
I turned on t.v. and watched a show about two fellows returning to a Buddhist monastery they had visited thirty years before. The once remote, difficult place to get to was just about to be inundated with a modern highway. The old Buddhist way of living and thinking was about to be lost. I've tried to be a Buddhist at various times in my life, and I have been to the bowels of a Buddhist monastery in China where it lost the luster for me. But watching this show last night, I realized what I had only held as a precept before. Simplicity. The emptiness of the Buddhist can't co-exist with a busy mind. We in the contemporary world are victims of overactivity. You can't be a technological Buddhist, I think.
But I could be as wrong about that as I am the EDM thing. I'm pretty good at being wrong.
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