Tag: movie

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 76

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Drip, Office Coffee

We went to see a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse. It’s one of those theaters that serves food with the movie and has a full bar. It was in an out of the way strip mall in Raleigh. They had big bay doors in front that were open like a welcome summer. It reminded me of some time when people used to go to movies, when getting out of the house was an event, and when the act of being out somewhere was a part of the joy, not just the transmission of light and sound coming out of the screen.

So much of life is your environment. You pick people and activities to fill your daily spaces but it’s the spaces themselves you’re most intimate with. Tomorrow you might lose your job. Wednesday that woman you were dating will move away. All the things you involve yourself with change by the months or hours, but that same bleak road that snakes out of your subdivision hasn’t changed.

I spent fifteen dollars on a drink. It was bourbon and sours, it was okay. From the glass rim, I watched waiters taking orders before the movie’s start and people scuttling to get to their seats. I saw the plush red backs of well-worn chairs, popcorn stomped into the carpet, and plastic lights on the walls that had ambitions to be chandeliers. This was a space where events took place, not just the day to day. Reverent like Christian Sunday; eager like couch conversations at a crowded party.

Currently Reading: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

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Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

Alfred Hitchcock

Coffee Log, Day 241

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Colombian, Starbucks Brand (grocery store bought, a gift)

I went to a friend’s house last night and carved pumpkins. It’s a nice place in a nice neighborhood. The backyard has two old trees. After the carving, we watched The Conjuring on their projector outside. The wind sat in for the movie. In the spooky parts, it was hard not to look up at the moon.

I’ve been having restless dreams. Late night drives, anxious faces, I’ve got somewhere to be but can’t get there. Typical stuff, but it sticks with me when I wake up. Today, I tried writing but it wasn’t doing. Then I tried submitting to journals but it wasn’t doing. I spent a morning in the sun spilling from my bedroom window watching internet streams. And it was peaceful and I guess that’s okay.

I can’t write much tonight. I’ve got to take the trash out. R has it ready. We had friends over, ordered pizzas, the boxes are too big for the cans. Best I can tell, the night’s a cold one. I have shorts on. Cross your fingers for me.

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

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“Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.” – Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

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Coffee Log, Day 233

garethlivesay

Hi.

Coffee: Colombian, Starbucks Brand (grocery store bought, a gift)

I went to a showing of Friday the 13th: Part 3 at the Carolina Theater in Durham. It was packed. The movie was in 3D. We had polarized glasses. Mine didn’t work, or maybe my eyes didn’t work. I ended up watching the entire movie without the glasses. The scenes were blurry, gags and goofs were screwy, the murders looked like you were watching them in a puddle forming during heavy rain. It was a strange show. It gave me a headache. I had a lot of fun.

The event was put on by Splatterfix. It’s a weekend long convention. They had booths set in the theater. Posters, blu-rays, coasters painted with movie scenes. Every booth had a group stuck around it talking; the line for popcorn was almost out the door. It felt like stepping back to something. Before the movie, everyone clapped. They all laughed at the goofy 3-D. There were a lot of black jeans and chain wallets. Every other woman had dark-dyed hair.

We left after the show. Our car was in a parking deck. The light above it had been blinking since we got there but it took on new meaning in the spooky evening. I drove slow behind a line of other cars. Some people exited the elevator: two men, one woman. One guy walks away from the others and turns to wave. He only half waves then he sticks his hands in his pockets and keeps going. The woman walks a few steps after. Her hair’s blood red and she’s got a lot of mascara. We finish the line and I see her leaving arm-in-arm with the other man. It was a crisp night, everyone’s got an October story. In the movies, we’d all be strung up on a meat hook before we got home.

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

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“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.” – Clive Barker

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Coffee Log, Day 207

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: French Roast, Trader Joe’s

There was a rock I used to sit on in City Park back in Burlington. It was big and out of the way, you had to climb on top of it and when you did there was this scruffy view through scruffy trees of the scruffy creek that floods sometimes. One time, toward the end of High School, I sat on the rock for a whole morning watching a groundhog consider jumping in the water. She was a fat, brown animal, pine-cone eyes. She was scared of me, I was in love with her.

Earlier that week, a girl from English class had kissed me outside her car, then stopped returning my calls, then got together with a close friend whom she’d later marry. In comparison, I liked the way Ms. Groundhog spelled ‘simple.’

At noon, families flooded the park. The rides spun up. I got distracted. When I looked back, the groundhog was nowhere. I checked the bank. I checked the water. I didn’t hear a splash, but groundhogs are slippery. I left without seeing her again; I ate an overpriced burger on the way home.

Like most people I’ve loved, Ms. Groundhog wanders into view sometimes. Something in the right kind of late summer light. I wonder what happened that morning – if she gathered up the straw-fire courage to jump.

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith

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“A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it.” – Phil (Bill Murray), Groundhog Day

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Coffee Log, Day 181

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro, Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

2010 changed me. I spent my summer on Greek oceans, the autumn falling in love. I had my first flirtations with teaching when I worked with America Reads and Counts; I wrote two stories and dreamed up others I wouldn’t write for another eight years. Duke had been rocky the first two years, but by Junior I had hit my stride. December had me sharing beds with the first woman I really loved. I guess you could say I was living a rosy-colored campus life.

Tonight, I went to a showing of ‘The Night is Short, Walk on Girl.’ It’s a Masaaki Yuasa film, animated, vibrant, a spiritual follow up to a short anime series from 2010 called ‘The Tatami Galaxy.’ The characters keep their faces from eight years ago but their lives and personalities have changed. The male lead is brasher; the heroine steals the show. The movie – like much of Yuasa’s work – is like tripping down a flight of stairs with two tall drinks in your hand, only to have a revolving group of strangers lift you up. It was good, not great, but it burrowed into me. I’d fallen hard for – and seen echoes of myself in – ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ as it aired in 2010.

I get stuck some mornings noticing the way I shave my beard. It’s semi-precise, consistent, but nothing like the pictures I see from college. I don’t remember when I changed length and blades, don’t remember why. It can be hard to stick the continuity between then and now. A small change, but keep putting coins in the piggy bank and eventually you have to empty it to make room for something new.

My favorite scene in ‘The Night is Short, Walk on Girl’ has four men stuffing down super spicy ramen in a big red tent. They’re competing to win rare books. Some want money, some want love, one is an old author trying to reclaim his first manuscript. Just as the competition finishes, the God of Used Book Markets pulls a string and the tent comes undone, the red tarp vanishing, all the old books flapping away like squawking birds. “I forbid the hoarding of rare books!” says the God, paraphrasing. The four men chase after their dreams, going their separate ways after having stumbled together. A few find their books. Others don’t.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“My still-as-of-yet rose-colored self was cut to the quick by that which is called reality.” – The Tatami Galaxy

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Coffee Log, Day 175

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro, Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

College, summer, we filmed shorts, me and a few guys. One of them’s still in film, the other’s a rockstar.

We dug a hole in my surrogate-aunt’s backyard. We’d been hired by the fiction but the labor was real. Hours, hot, NC sweat lodge. It took a week but we did it. ‘Dig,’ he named the film.

I go back there. I’m in that hole. My muscles are younger. Hair thicker. I haven’t lost patches of my pigment to vitiligo. Brown dirt, careful not to hit the worms.

I liked it, working toward something with all of you.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.” – George Bernard Shaw

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