Up not as early as I’d hoped but I’m up. My laptop clock or time reader or little ‘here’s where you are in the day’ corner tells me it’s 6:30. 6:30. Most people aren’t even up right now, least those on my block. My wife and son are still slowly sawing some huge basin tree by tree upstairs. And I’m here. Writing. Have a meeting in the morning with a guy who might buy some wine from me, but who knows. He wants me to look at him while he smells and sips and thinks something sophisticated or whatever or tries to look like he is– no, I should say that. He’s actually a nice guy. A really nice guy if he’s taking time to visit with me and try some of my buddy’s small lot projects.
But work is on the mind. I have to start the day, every, with coffee. Don’t working people love their coffee? Met a guy recently who said “naw I just can’t do the coffee thing?” ‘What the hell’s wrong with you’ I thought. But then, ‘good for him’, I said inside. He’s not part of this patten, this expectation of work and have the goddamn morning cup storm and how to get ready, and he’s not in the caffeinated catacomb as I am. I should have woken earlier. I could get more done, write more, maybe finish an essay or lecture or do some imagining of how soon I’m going to travel and sit in Paris again at some café on whatever street that was in ’09 by the hotel and just think to myself, “See? I made it.”
Someone’s awake upstairs, I think my wife. Or no, that would be my son, right above the couch here. So my writing may be interrupted but I’ve started at least and I keep going till he charges me as he does with that slightly open smile, then always jumping on me, saying “Daddy!” I always accept that as a guarantee, that something wonderful will happen today. Something already did, he was the first character that greeted me. I sip quick the coffee, ‘cause he’ll knock it over if I leave it on the wood floor, my right side, close like a holstered gun. Well isn’t it?
Not in any mood to work today. I’ll just put that out there, way out there, but not too far. I’d be in that coffee shop off Railroad Square (or is it ON Railroad Square?) just typing, writing the characters around me, eavesdropping on their proclamations and confessions to friends and arguments between boyfriend and girlfriend and just make it my own. That’s not work, that’s not what I’m directed to do from some maturity obligation. It’s WHAT I am. WHO, Mike’s always been, And now he can pleasantly levitate as a writer. And not some story, fiction, and not even some rushed memoir. Just a day, mine, written– sip coffee, still alone down here. Odd, the day already forwarded, onward into…let’s see……
(7/17/15)
