Walkaway Joe
I was in town early one morning this week for an appointment and it was fairly dead. It wasn’t ungodly early, but lots of cafés weren’t open. The footfall wasn’t there. Just me. I walked up and down side streets, looked in windows at empty jeweler cushions and bland clothes. Read the flyers and posters fading on the dusty glass of abandoned stores. Had a sickly hot chocolate. Waited. Saw a well-dressed woman walking a small dog. Passed by trucks unloading echoing kegs. I sat in a place I’d not been in years, ordered some eggs and bacon, pulled out a pen and a draft of something I’m writing. Marked it up in a thin forest green pen. It was an expensive morning, but it had moments of peace and space.
A few days before that I was in a suburban village early for another appointment and the place was teeming with yoga pants, good waterproof coats, flat whites and golden retrievers. The comfortable life silhouette. Chats, pleasantries, barks, lo-fi Spotify. The comfortable life soundtrack. I had an iced coffee named after an American city, watched dogs for a while, then made my way to a door up the street.
I’m a morning person. I’m not productive in the morning, necessarily, but I do feel calm moving about the place as it wipes sleep from its eyes.
I can’t pinpoint much of the work from home slash the air is full of spores spell. As a whole, it’s been diluted. And I had reasons to not be fully present. But I do remember one week, a mild Autumn week with a welcome chill. A small sort of breathtaking. I woke up at six every morning and walked to a café within spitting distance of the sea where I’d get a takeaway drink and pastry. Some of those days I’d sit on a bench for a few long moments, staring out at blue and grey and not minding the cold. Those are days with a clear thumping pulse.
Time doesn’t just slip away these days. Hours gallop. Weekends disappear.
On Mondays of late, sitting in front of a big screen with a cup of tea and mental whiplash, I wonder about all these tools and programmes that are supposed to help us work smarter, to help us schedule and summarise. I read headlines about the office property market and then the housing market. I check my bank balance and my obligations spreadsheet. I look at my diary, full of reminders, and wonder if I will meet the deadline for that competition, that journal submission, that personal deadline, all amid the deadlines I’m paid to care about. I’m amazed I manage to write a sentence about made up people and made up problems. I remind myself I had some good news lately, that I am managing at the only possible pace: gentle while being gentle on myself.
Make your community into an Apartheid Free Zone.
I liked learning about Vermont through this interview with Noah Kahan in The New Yorker.
Staying in that neighbourhood, I enjoyed reading this older Dublin Inquirer feature on Total Country Inchicore.
I roll my eyes anytime I read a book described as spicy (I find the word very You Are Not Serious People, grow up!!!), but I’m enjoying the audiobook of Sex, Lies and Sensibility by Nikki Payne.
I’ve been very loyal to Matthew McConaughey over the years (his memoir audiobook amazing no notes I won’t engage in any debate or slander GREENLIGHT iykyk) so I’m glad to see he’s made another country music video where Walkaway Joe became A Sad Barfly Dad. That’s just one of the seven basic plots.