Tag: city

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 282

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Hi.

Coffee: Black Drip, Sweet Hut Bakery; it was the second time I went here, an East Asian bakery on Peachtree selling all kinds of bean buns and glazed kringles; we went for breakfast, took our tray to the counter, watched people walking dogs up and down the road under a crisp blue sky; I tried the ones you tried; we each had our own coffees; unlike the bean-buns, the coffee wasn’t sweet, wasn’t savory; it was weak as old beetles clinging to trees in a rainstorm, and tasted more like dishwater than brewed beans; still, I enjoyed it, because it was what I needed before a long day, a last day, plane flights, some caffeine, a little perk to sustain me

I came back from Atlanta. It was a full plane and crowded airports. We’re in the season where everyone’s going, going, going, trying hard to find somewhere to be. I saw a man in a button up rushing back and forth to ticket counters trying to check what flight he was on, a woman in a red cap and black shawl and crooked knees, two brown dogs and one white one, frustrated day-workers, a baggage loader doing jump-ups on the conveyor belt, and my own two tired feet in new socks and new shoes standing around waiting for a plane in the company of pleasant memories.

It was my third trip to the city. Isn’t it funny how the more you see of a place the smaller it’s getting? Like an erector set, only every time you add so many buildings you move down a scale, cutting off a few inches, cramming more and more into the same fixed space. I saw a lot more of Atlanta over the past four days. We went walking, driving, took a few trains. We ended up in Five Points where the wind was blowing ten degrees out of us and all the shops were closed while the Georgia State kids were on winter break. We took a trip to a district thirty-minutes outside the city where the buildings were emptying out to lay-offs and a long black turkey chased trucks out of the parking lot.

And now I’m back. Cary creeps around me like a missionary, handing out it’s pamphlets and hoping to win me over. But my heads still knocking around the Atlanta streetcorners, shaping up the city, and I think it’ll be there for a while.

Currently Reading: Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

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You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 203

garethlivesay2 Comments

Hi.

Coffee: Small Black Coffee, McDonald’s; bought the cup at noon which wasn’t soon enough to pick my eyes up off the acid-wash road I’d been driving; at least the drive was a little easier after; I was so in need of the pick-me-up that I hardly tasted the coffee; really, I was just drinking a thin white cup and plastic lid

The last thing the city said to me was “Take a Right on Peachtree and keep going.” That’s how I left Atlanta.

I missed my post yesterday. The fourth time since starting, each time feels a little less bad. Is that a good thing? The Coffee Log came about in 2018 during a cold, disrupted February. The regularity of having every day work its way toward a keyboard helped me. But yesterday I was traveling and too filled up to put my thoughts down.

Atlanta looked like love to me. That’s to say it’s complicated. The streets were busy. Guys smoked the skyline on ashy tenth-floor balconies. My friend and tour-guide took me around town for a drive to different districts. It seemed like every corner had its murals in different colors. You danced between moods and misfortunes. Walk long enough by blossoming houses that can’t afford to root the ivy off their walls and you’ll get to a three-floored mansion, built on the backs of grandfathers, ready to take advantage of your budding affair.

But damn, it was all so beautiful.

Having taken a wrong turn past a bookstore, we routed a middling neighborhood holding up a canopy of century-old trees. In a patch of bare grass was a circle of tall red flowers. Then, a block later, I watched a woman pull a torn blue shirt onto a luckless man waiting out the hot day on crippled church steps. A different kind of love.

All of us are responsible to the ones we give our hearts to. Sometimes that can mean breathing a bit of space between you, and other times its to tape your fingers together and lift each other up. But it’s easiest to abuse what’s closest to you, your blood, partner, community, kin – it takes just a little bit of desire to put a hefty pricetag on what once was affordable housing, to – in deep rapture – take them for all they’re worth.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

T.S. Eliot, The Rock

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 145

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

Last night, I went to the Third Wednesday Open Mic hosted at Fig. A colleague read from her new novel. It was pointed – as in, her words were written to have a point. A few months ago, I had my own featured reading with the group.

It’s no good time for small business. Despite the economy on an uptick, the gains are going to deeper pockets. Yes, there’s greater purchasing power, and yes, wages have gone (a little bit) up, but the blood and sweat of Americana – that store on the corner that knits your community together – is bottom-up.

Two years ago I was in Roanoke Rapids. It’s a tiny town on the Virginia border. I was taken on tour by my partner at the time, who’d grown up there. We drove around the town. There were bright old buildings with small front lawns. There was a factory that had shut down. In the epicenter, all the downtown storefronts were at best boarded over, some worsened with broken glass, a few lit windows poking through. At night, we picked up dinner at a still-thriving Chinese take-out. For lunch, we ate an an old diner that reminded me of a few places in my own home.

I read an economic outlook that says the next few years will likely avoid a recession. Rates will taper but we won’t bottom out. Good news, and from a trustworthy source. But it misses the picture of all the lives that aren’t off I-40, the towns you take a local road to get to, or the city bars stuck in a unlucky corner, destined to drown not in alcohol but in weeds.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

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That night, after the movie, driving my father’s car along the country roads, I began to wonder how real the landscape truly was, and how much of a dream is a dream.

Don DeLillo, Americana

Coffee Log, Day 331

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, Office Coffee; back in the office after a week of off-site training; just as brown as stale wheat bread; just as oily as a nervous kid in gym class.

The dishes are piling up on my table again. I keep telling myself I’ll do something about them, but the excuses are easier than effort. I’ll get rid of them eventually. I always do.

I was talking to a guy who moved here from halfway across the country. I found myself suggesting places to go. I told him to check out Durham, to find something to eat in Raleigh, and to sleep tight in Cary. It was good advice, I thought. But it got me thinking about where I fit in to the central NC picture.

When I went to Duke, we were all afraid of Durham. There was this rumor that you’d lose a lot more than your wallet if you stepped too far off campus. And before that, when I was growing up, everywhere between Winston and Wilson seemed like a place to get away from. Turns out, it takes a lot of effort to get away from anything. And usually, those times you manage it, you end up somewhere pretty much the same as you left.

I got dinner with R at the Taco Bell. We picked it up, took it home. The guy at the drive-thru was so busy he walked away before taking R’s card. You could feel the sweet winter air hacking through our window. I was in a jacket. I almost took it off to feel the wind a little better.

As of writing this, all the dishes are still there.

Novel Count: 15,761

Currently Reading: Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.

Teju Cole, Open City