Hi.
Coffee: Folger’s Something-or-Other, brewed in a 12 cup office pot anonymously; it was wet and grey outside so coming in to coffee was a good way to start the morning; the brew tasted like those chips you stick in a hedgehog’s terrarium; it had a bitter aftertaste; but I loved it all the same.
I’m on a quick lunch at home. I had leftovers from my weekend stir-fry. I made that meal in December, now it’s January. A rice-bowl bridge between two years. It’s really hitting home that it’s 2019.
I don’t know my plans for this year. I’d had 2018 all mapped out but ended up with a lot of detours. So maybe it’s just as well that I’m not too busy planning.
I think we spend a lot of our lives coasting. There are these invisible highways – work schedules, curriculums, diet plans, there’s this fear of slipping off the road, of going too fast or too slow, of getting ticketed for not following the line. A lot of good can come from coasting – it often gets you somewhere. But it’s just as easy to veer off route and the penalty is rarely what you expect.
A few years ago, I was on a skype call talking about chocolates with a friend. They came in these silly wrappers with ‘inspirational’ quotes on the inside. It was raining. Throughout the conversation, I kept hearing that rain. So at one point I asked her to hold and I got up and walked out into the yard. I didn’t bring an umbrella, didn’t bring a jacket. I got soaked. When I came back, she laughed at me. She asked me why I’d done something so ridiculous. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a clear answer. Eventually, I realized I’d done it mostly because it was ridiculous. And that I needed to remember some ability to surprise myself.
Novel Count: 10,810
Currently Reading: Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami
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The line of traffic advancing towards the rising sun looked like a procession of the returning dead. Every one of them, solitaries in clean shirts, smoking, checking mirrors to see if their reflections were still there, wore dark glasses.
Iain Sinclair, London Orbital
Livesay Writing 