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Showing posts from 2017

Above the bricks with music warbling

This is not the place I should be, but it's the place that I am at the moment. I can hear loud dance music coming from a bar about 400 feet away from my sonic 4:30 in relationship to the screen I am currently seeing. I am not usually here at my desk this late, but there are reasons why I am still located here and not at my home.  One reason is not the music. I am not sure why this establishment feels the need to blast this elevator music at the top of its woofers and tweeters, but that's their policy even though if I look back over my right shoulder I won't see a single person dancing and I only see two or three patrons from my vantage point. The structure that I am talking about has been home to many places, and anyone with sleuthing skills could find an audio piece I did on the role that place has played in my life as connected to who I am and how long I have been here, at my desk, living a life that isn't entirely typical.  I decorated the front of my d

In a room of strangers

Despite all I do, I still feel so anonymous and unwelcome in the place I have lived for nearly 15 years. There's a certain notion I have that I will always be an outsider in this community, always a stranger. This could be that I am a writer, which means my entire reason for existing is to capture the moments in front of me in a way that makes sense to me, while also realizing this is not a time where words have much weight with most people. Words strung together have no worth unless there's a way to create value. And what is the economic value of a mind trying to calm itself down through ordering thoughts in a linear fashion? Yet, that's the trick. I am capable of breathing deeply and launching into a trance that allows me to stitch together whatever it is I'm feeling into a narrative that adds worth to my soul, a reason for my existence. I get paid for this ability, and I survive in part because I'm capable of capturing my thoughts and fashioning them into p

Looking west as the sun sets and mysterious smoke billows

I sigh as I begin to write this as a task I was hoping to undertake on my computer doesn't seem to be working and I'm not sure how to fix the situation. I'm dismayed that smoke or dust or white particles seem to be drifting north from the vicinity of the unfinished Landmark Hotel.  I sigh because all is not what it could be. I'm 43 years of age and I'm somewhat accomplished but it appears to me that reality is made of wet tissue paper and at any moment any unwanted force could cause the entire container of me to crumble and tear. That smoke or dust or cloud of white particles alarms me as the evening sun falls down towards the horizon, changing the quality of light to what filmmakers call the Golden Hour. I am long past the point where I feel the mythology of celluloid has any power over me. I want to know why things are the way they are in the real world I can see and feel. I appreciate the power of story but I wonder how damaged our society has become throug

On a metal table on a brick walkway

Strangers stream past me on their way to wherever strangers stream. There's a constant flow of humanity all around me as I sip a third coffee, my price of admission to sit in this metal chair whose four legs are atop bricks that were laid here in 2009.  I'm transcribing a candidate forum from the other night for a story. It is a holiday but I don't feel like relaxing or doing nothing. I feel there is a great deal that needs work both in my life and in my professional life.  I crane my head from left to right to witness all of these humans I don't know and wonder what their lives are like and what they dream of and what they are afraid of and what they are interested in. The candidates' chatter is passing over me as I type these words, sipping my coffee, waiting to hear if there's anything else I need to write into the narrative. Yesterday I worked a wedding at Trump Winery and there were many strangers who traveled here for that event. I believe on

Another potential last night at the Tavern

It's just after 10:30 and I'm slowly closing up the tavern. The sign on the door says we're open until 11:00 so I'm waiting a couple more minutes until I lock the door. We're close to the point where we close the place on Saturdays in the summer and once I close us up, that's it for this era of me working here.  Sometimes when I think a second about this space I can imagine me here for the first few shifts I worked here as a server, making $2.13 an hour at lunch. This was in August of 2004. I'd left the full-time job I had in Charlottesville and I'd been sitting in my house doing nothing for two months. When the bottom fell out, this is where I landed. And I began to rebuild my life again. And now I'm in a life that is full and filled with lots of activity, even though I'm not always certain that I'm in the right place. I believe there is something, or many somethings, that is not quite right at the moment.  It's 11:02 and e

In this room at the Omni

2017 had not happened yet the last time I was in the ballroom at the Omni. I was here with my American children for First Night and there was a magician we had seen at least twice year. I was incredibly happy to be here with them. I've been in this large rectangular space so many times over the last 15 years ever since I moved to Charlottesville, every time as a guest. This is one of the only rooms in town where I've never been a catering server, but every time I am in here I am interested in the logistics of how they do their work.  I've been to many banquets, many speakers and I've had a lot of fun and a bit of sorrow here. I'm struck by how little I want to say about any of it, this being a public blog and all.Much of my life shouldn't be out there. Yet this is space where I decide to hit send and decide to once again commit my random thoughts about a dastardly world outward. Maybe I have something to say, I think, as I listen to the murmur of t