“I’m finally learning how to keep a notebook: nothing is sacred and nothing is profane. Let it all blur together, the ruminations and hopeful plans and overheard phrases and client work and memories of my parents and shopping lists and aspirational routines and things to look up later and ideas for new songs to reverberate.”
James Reeves, Midnight Radio
I’m sitting at my desk. It’s 9:30. The microphone glows blue beside me. Two monitors are strewn with work-related esoterica. There’s a cup of coffee. There’s two typewriters, one from the 80s and one from the 60s or possibly early 70s. The blinds are half open and the daylight, freshly liberated from daylight savings time, beams into my face. My cat is downstairs idly waiting for me to be finished here so I can let him out. I can hear the occasional car whirring past on 71st or 72nd or 70th. The clank of the waste disposal truck just echoed through the alley. I’m tired. The rest of the day, the rest of the week stretches out ahead, promising plenty of mundane tasks to be taken care of, and then what? The things I was worried about last night I’m still worried about, but they’re held in stasis by the daily must-take-care-of business that keeps anxieties at bay. My neighbor’s gazebo is empty but still all set up, like a stage set for a play that’s been over for a few weeks. That means it’s Fall.
The stereo clicks on and a song starts playing. It’s May the Circle Be Unbroken — some version I like, maybe the Neville Brothers. A fresh breeze outside stirs the changing leaves. Almost everything green has turned to burgundy, butter, sriracha. Rivers of locust leaves adorn the curbs of all the side streets around here. One magnificent pine tree grows in the middle of Hope Ave, cracking the asphalt, dwarfing the houses. I’m sure it wasn’t there before. People seem to take it in stride. They slow down, cautiously approach, then drive around it, on to wherever it was they were going. It’s 1:30. My cat has brilliant sapphire eyes. He lets himself in through the miniature swinging door and asks for his lunch. I pause. How long have I been up here, typing this? Why is my computer monitor a field of unbroken amber text? Back to work. Outside the casement window, a brace of crows meanders about.
My cat strides up the banister, lithely avoiding the clinging vines that intertwine its posts. He strolls into my chamber wearing his little smoking jacket and announces that his lunch is now late and he would like this lamentable situation rectified at once. Just a minute, just a minute, I admonish, I’m right in the middle of something but — what was I right in the middle of? It seems there was some obligation, some ongoing relationship I had been attending to. I can’t just disengage now, can I? And yet, there’s nothing to be disengaged from. I leave myself a note, penned in burgundy ink on a slip of paper, and tuck it into the page I had open in the tome on my oaken desk, and rise from my leather chair. I’m coming, I’m coming! My cat turns and trots back down the stairs, glancing back occasionally to make sure I’m following. The kitchen is in a state of mild disarray. Ah, yes. The kids were here last night. Omelettes at 3:30 in the morning, long incandescent conversations in the middle of the night. It warms my heart. I love when their lives are able to intersect, and honored when it is here that they do.