Tag: cold

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 289

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Organic Dark Roast, Don Pablo’s; a gift from my father; he bought the beans off the internet, had read reviews about what brand’s best, settled on Don Pablo because it showed up on so many lists; and it’s good; easy; like late winter, with your socks on, by the windows, never quite needing to go out

It got up to 70 today so I cracked the window open. It was cloudy, and then it rained. I liked listening to rain (I think everybody does) so I enjoyed myself, had a couple glasses of ice water to keep cool, to keep cold like the winter, to remember what season I was in. Because it is winter despite the temperature, and just because the world’s greenhouse heat-throws is the new normal doesn’t mean you have to forget the crisp seasons of your childhood, all the things that brought us here.

I’ve been having a sick day. A couple sick days, actually. My throat’s scratchy and my nose is running, but neither so terribly as to lay me out. It’s one of those bugs that muddies up your head but doesn’t take the energy out of you. I feel like I could run a mile but forget where I was going halfway through. To deal with this, I’ve been hooked in to TV screens and book reading, things to catch my focus, keep me less in the present with all it’s fuzzy green gunk and more in that nebulous fiction of no-time, self-entertainment.

The year’s almost over. Some would say the decade, I’d say so too. Zero is such a round number it makes you want to climb inside it and push off, a raft ride, spiraling by into uncharted waters.

Currently Reading: Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

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

We knocked on the doors of Hell’s darker chamber, Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in,

Joy Division, Decades

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 287

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I slept on an air mattress that was laid out on the same spot where my grandmother had died twenty years before. She’d been in this big bed hospice brought, a bunch of wires, and hospital gowns (the gowns were gowns, the sheets were gowns, a deathbed wears you, like it or not). Her bed was raised up, mine wasn’t, so really I was sleeping about twelve inches under her ghost.

That was Christmas this year.

Back to work, I met a woman who was my age but had just finished school. She’d been living in the West, out in NorCal, then Arizona, but she kept ending up in warm places during winter so she’d be surprised by the cold. She couldn’t take it anymore and moved back to Raleigh. All told, she’s missed two years’ worth of summers. She said this greedily. Her nose was red. She had sunny blond hair.

These stories fit together for me. Life changes, and sometimes it’s gone. I spend a lot of time listening to other peoples’ stories. And when I’m thinking about my own, they’re always hovering a few feet over me, less a curse, more gentle, a cobweb, but beautiful, and rainbowed, viciously drinking up the colors.

I had a plan to move to Michigan once but it wasn’t much of a plan so it didn’t happen. If I had moved, I reckon it would have been cold.

Currently Reading: Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

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

Besides, nothing mattered to her any longer. If she had anything left it was her horror of cold — and the uncle had coal through his contacts. But she found the atmosphere of Berlin hard to bear. She dreamed of escape, of going to live under some more clement sky, far, very far away from it all, closer to nature.

Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 272

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro Extra Dark, Trader Joe’s

There was a man standing beside a cascade of trashbags piled on his porch. This was the first floor, a nearby apartment. I saw him in the dark. It was 7pm. Rain was coming down, lightly, and it was cold, breezy. The man had fingerless gloves and an iphone. He was wearing a jacket and a hood. I walked past him and was so distracted I went to the wrong car. Walking back, I heard him talking. Words get amplified in a rainstorm. It’s like you’re listening through the other end of a paper-cup phone.

“Mm,” he said, and “Uh-huh.”

I got in my car and turned the heat up. Pulling back, I saw him caught in the back-up camera. The porchlight was on, attracting ghosts of summer bugs. His face and hands were wet but he wasn’t wiping them. bits of rain made rivers on the trashbag mountain. And I was thinking, “What could there be in all those trashbags?” No-one keeps so much garbage. Or, rather, we all do, but we don’t often have the guts to throw it out.

When I came home from supper, the man – and the mountain – were gone.

Currently Reading: Another Country, James Baldwin

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

Little by little I came to the conclusion that in this day and age only the garbagemen could bring a poetic thought to fruition.

Wolfgang Hillbig, The Tidings of the Trees

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 259

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

It was a bitter cold. The wind blowed like Ikea. All bluster, taupes and blues, thinner when you’re in it than looking on from the outside. I watched a small yellow dog run laps around her owner. I thought: we’re stuck together, little dog, the same home, same ground, you and me, like it or not.

I worked today. It’s a Saturday. That always throws me off. So instead here’s a story: I used to work at a coffee shop tucked up one level in a Barnes and Noble. It had its own podium, tables, chairs, but you could see the whole store so you felt both a part and apart. When it was busy, I smoked lattes off the steamer. When it wasn’t, I’d watch bits of rain come down the windows.

There was one customer who always ordered a hot cider. He came alone, mostly, once with his daughter. He had a bald head and black eyes and wore button-ups, was important, or looked that way, and his vice was the hot juice, that sugar. Unlike the other regulars he wouldn’t talk to you and if you asked his name he wouldn’t repeat it. He wasn’t sour, just stoic, looking past us, self-absorbed, but in an endearing way, like school teachers, or marble statues. Late nights, closing the cafe on a Saturday, he’d show, and we’d talk (about the order), and then he’d leave, and I’d forget about him, pass him out, pass the gallstone, until I saw him again. But now that he’s so far gone from me, I catch stories going over in my mind of his face and features, because it bugs me, wondering who he is, this person I used to see so regularly, and what he’s doing now.

That was it, the whole story. Was it alright?

Sicker winds in the evening. The kind you want to hold, wrap in blankets, inhale, a sense of camaraderie.

Currently Reading: Another Country, James Baldwin

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

On the way down the hill we walked three abreast in the cobblestone street, drunk and laughing and talking like men who knew they would separate at dawn and travel to the far corners of the earth.

Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 256

garethlivesay1 Comment

Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

It stormed over like a bluebird molting above your kitchen window, rain streak-feathered, cold, blue-dashed out of the clouds, a torn up sky, and then at the end of the day when we were just trying to make it home there’s a frozen, bloodied Ruby Red up there, skylined citrus so perfect it’s ominous, begging me to stay, to just sit down, freeze, shiver, crack my teeth on asphalt, goodbye to the ordinary, never going home again.

It was in that bruised and bloodied second that I wanted to be somewhere quiet with you.

Currently Reading: Another Country, James Baldwin

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

Life… is like a grapefruit. Well, it’s sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.

Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Coffee Log, Day 281

garethlivesay1 Comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, single-serve packet; might as well finish the week with this stuff.

I slept with the windows open. It was cold but nice. I like hearing the night. Around 11:00pm the birds stop going. Then, around 4:30am, they start back. We spend a lot of time sequestering ourselves from nature. Even when you’re a hiker, a climber, a camper, you’re someone who’s making nature a special trip. It’s a privilege not to know the cold, uncompromising world, and a privileged thing to choose to flirt with it.

I remember the solar eclipse. The tree outside my window cut moon-shaped shadows on the pavement. I didn’t buy the glasses so those little moons were it for me. R and I walked outside and stayed for fifteen minutes. It got dim then it got brighter. There were all kinds of people out. Lots of kids. There’s always lots of kids. I think I might go a little crazy if not for their constant antics.

It’s been a hard week. On paper, nothing happened. Maybe that’s a part of it. Or maybe it’s the end of the year. Tomorrow’s December. Two weeks and I’ll be 29. My brain’s symbolically predisposed. So is yours. The cold; the wet; the dark bare bark; the pomp that tries to sell you something; the warm fires; the curtained windows you had a chance to peek behind, but that once the year is done you know will stay closed. Symbols.

Happy November. Here comes December. Grab the bottle and toss the cork. Christen your old-body ship into less turbulent times.

Novel Count: 14,711 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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

It is December, and nobody asked if I was ready.

Sarah Kay


Coffee Log, Day 279

garethlivesay2 Comments

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, single-serve packet; I brewed what they had at the bank branch. I had the time but not the energy to make my own this morning. There was a big box of plastic pouches, two scoops each, enough for a pot. A waste of plastic. As for the taste, imagine being a woodchuck on a cold night; you’ve got to make yourself something but the only trees to bore are aging, wet oaks; you suck it up and chew.

A dead-end sort of day. You keep turning circles and it’s just another wall.

I woke up at 3am. Thought there was a snake in my bed. There wasn’t. I stayed up awhile letting nightmares in and out. Then I got up late.

Cold outside, a puffy coat militia. I’ve been thinking about rivers. I’d like to take a dip, freeze up, and see what extremities come off. 

I’m doing revisions on the book. New directions. You’ll see the word count drop and rise sporadically. Still writing everyday, just writing over. White out.

Art is a stuck pig. You tie him up and gut him. Then you’re shaving parts, boiling the bones, making stew. There’s lots to devour. Some of it’s even good.

Novel Count: 14,684 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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

I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden


Coffee Log, Day 271

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee Tea: Earl Grey, Bigelow; I went to the grocery store and tried to buy coffee filters but they only had cone filters and my machine’s got a basket; so today I’m drinking tea.

I described someone as being like ‘black tea in the winter’ and then I forgot I’d ever said that. Later, we got together; now, we aren’t together and I finally remember what I meant by describing someone as being like ‘black tea in the winter.’

I got lost just once in Heraklion, Crete. It was the second night there but it felt like my plane had just landed. On approach, ground winds had picked us off the runway. We did three passes of the island, the wings going haywire, the cabin shaking around. I have a knack for bumpy flights.

Anyway, myself and two other guys were exploring. It was late. We were all a little jet-lagged. The city is a grove of brown buildings by the sea. At night, when the lights come on, it’s like you’re only seeing half of things, but the half you’re seeing is the one that matters.

We walked to the coast and back up again. It was on the way back that we got lost. The roads kept their angles from us the first time. New twists and turns. Suddenly, you’re a bird in a tree whose branches you don’t remember.

There was a cafe in the dark. Two roads split around it like feuding lovers. The front was glass. The walls were painted red and white. Two ladies kept the place, owner and daughter. They spoke English because the daughter studied in America. Lost on across the ocean, ages removed from home, we talked to the women and got directions. Then we talked some more over pastries and wine.

There’s a deep sadness in finding out where you’re going. But that moment when you’re just on the other side – surprised, relieved, full to overflowing – that’s a good feeling.

Novel Count: 10,795 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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

You have everything but one thing: madness.  A man needs a little madness or else – he never dares cut the rope and be free.

Nikos Kazantzakis


Coffee Log, Day 267

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: French Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

R and I went to Fiesta Mexicana. It’s this Mex-American joint across town. I wore my winter sweater because it’s not winter but it already feels like it. The dining room was well lit. There were two lonely people at the lonely bright bar.

I’m prone to eavesdropping. On good days I tell myself it’s research for future stories. We were stuck between two boothes with big parties. Both boothes were making lots of noise.

By the windows was a group of three families on a dinner date. They had their kids with them. One of the kids talked about how she’d learned to eat her vegetables in school. Another kid kept asking her mother for a sister. It was nice to hear the families. The streetlights had a way of showing you their skin. One of those old Greek pots, vibrant people.

The group behind me was something else. Two couples, both 30-ish, only the men were talking. Well, the women tried to talk then the men stopped them. One guy was going on and on about his business meetings. He hated the ‘creative types.’ The other was blaming his date for making his mother re-arrange her holiday dinner plans. She’d talk up a bit and he’d say something like “No.” The phrase ‘They were making fun of me for owning a golf cart’ was passed around. It was quite the drama.

And all I’ve got to say is: Pft. Golf-cart-owning loser.

Novel Count: 9,075 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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

“I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.”

– G.K. Chesterton


Coffee Log, Day 265

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: French Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

Everyone was poking around in coats today. Meanwhile, in California, half the state burns.

I grew up in a household obsessively haunted by weather. My dad would walk outside in thunderstorms. We had a dog that would hide from rain.

But my mother was the focal point for the family’s weather ups and downs. She’d be up late watching documentaries on this or that super storm. Sometimes, she’d watch the weather channel on repeat. Any hint of bad rain and there her hands would go, wringing.

I remember this one time there was a tornado at my elementary. First the lights cut, then the glass was shaking, finally we were in the hall and under our own backpacks on the cold, hard linoleum floor. A lot of kids were crying. The assistant principal was holding the blown-open doors. But I’d watched a hundred disaster films with my mother so I was ready. This was Christmas, a celebration, something wonderfully inevitable. We would all get swooped up and tossed a thousand miles. Nothing could be more comfortably certain.

Sometimes I think there’s a bravery in staring long and hard at the things that scare you. It’s a messy sort of courage – a lot of fits and worries, 2 am texts to your adult son when there’s a national weather warning – but still brave. Can’t look at a horror and call it something else, but you can choose to look at it all the same.

I’ve learned a lot of things from my mother.

Novel Count: 8,742 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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

“In any democratic, civilized – even non-democratic nations, if you are a nation, it means to say that in our case, if there’s a hurricane in Louisiana, the people of Vermont are there for them. If there’s a tornado in the Midwest, we are there for them. If there’s flooding in the East Coast, the people in California are there for us.” – Bernie Sanders

IMG_1793