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Showing posts from May, 2017

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