Tag: night

Coffee Log, Day 345

garethlivesay1 Comment

Hi.

Coffee: Locomotive Blend, PennyCup Coffee

I’m writing this from a Chinese diner. I’m on a few hours of sleep. I’m coming off a ten hour workday. And that’s perfect, because you’ve got to be half-gone and strung out to appreciate a moment like this.

Outside is a bar with two guys smoking a permanent smell into their leather jackets. A busy patio, warmer weather, all their faces have lines even though no one is over forty. Someone lost is pacing the parking lot with his headphones on.

I need you to see this. You can’t see it, so I’ll write it down. It’s the grit and sulfur. It’s the sort of simple-awful reality that we all share. And it’s gorgeous. It’s inevitable: that there will always be a quiet corner of a struggling store to sit and wait to find yourself in. Despite all the times you get lost, the seat in the corner stays open. It’s not warm. It’s not comfortable. But it’s real.

Novel Count: 20,917

Currently Reading: Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami

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I feel anger oozing out my family portrait,

Who knew posing in the gutter could turn out so gorgeous.

Earthgang, So Many Feelings (lyrics)

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

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

Sarah Kay


Coffee Log, Day 278

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Hi.

Coffee: French Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

I’ve got this unintentional habit where I wake up about two hours after falling asleep with my heart pounding and a sense that the night is going to swallow me. I have to get up, drink water, turn some lights on, sometimes get dressed. But you see some things in the bleak night.

It’s breathless, the apartment. My roommates have their doors closed. There’s green and blue on the walls from the little lights on our router. It’s the kind of place you’d think a cat could fall in love over but we don’t have a cat.

I let it stay black in the kitchen. I take a glass from memory and pour water. The faucet’s loud. It’s bigger than the stream outside. I take the water to the window while my heart calms down. I look at the blacked-out lots, the cars, the couple windows that are still on. Who else is up? I don’t want to share – it’s a small slice of time.

When you’re back in bed after something like that, the dreams come different: simple and easy and colorful and pleasant, like they’re lying to you.

Novel Count: 14,161 words

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

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It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead…

Ray Bradbury


Coffee Log, Day 178

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Hi.

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

Midnight shows its teeth. Tar-paper, Saturday flies poking out of apartments. L left an hour ago, the place stills smells like him, clothes in the rain. My roommates are up to something – two separate somethings, separate rooms, wind-downs. My new fan takes up all the unwanted space in the room.

A thunderstorm hangs on to the town’s outskirts, wetting the skin of whoever’s dumb or desperate enough to be out in it. It blew over hours ago and washed all the birdshit off the cars. Fertilizer; the green grass gets even greener after the bad stuff sinks down.

Fuzzy – marginal headache, persistent itches, stiff fingers, blender thoughts. A normal bedtime for halfway-through-28, head in arrivals but body inching toward departure, the kind of eminence Caesar saw when he stared at Alexander’s statue.

There are three lost geese stuck on the greenest grass beside our creekbed. Leftovers from a northern migration, they’re waiting it out til Autumn. When the flock comes back, they’ll get to see if they still recognize themselves. Tonight, I hope they’ve found dry branches.

Invisible moon, eyelid stars. Together, anxious morning.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.” – Andre Breton

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