WHAT LIFE ADDS UP TO IS STILL A PROBLEM
In the New Moon Cafe, which was voted “Best of the Best” way back in 1995. A map of the United States hangs on the wall behind the sweet tea dispenser. It’s faded and stained, but decorated with hundreds of pins. New York City, Atlanta, Dallas, San Fransisco, Charleston, Miami and every small town in between. The eastern seaboard is so crowded with push-pins that the city names have been obliterated by the perforations. Austin doesn’t have a pin, but there don’t seem to be any extra, and I don’t know if the map is still in use, or merely decorative now. Maybe if I asked for a pin they’d say “Oh we don’t do that thing anymore.” Or maybe they’d smile and hand me a pin and ask me where it is I’m from.
The cafe is on the main street, which everyone calls Main Street but is actually Richmond Avenue, aka Highway 1. Storefronts and signage like Plum Pickins, “Prompt Loans,” “Customized Bra Fittings” at A Soft Touch Lingerie & Gifts, which my sister says is a scam because it doesn’t matter if you’ve been in there before, you’re not even allowed to buy a bra if you don’t get the fitting. “Imagine! Cash in hand and they won’t even let you GIVE THEM MONEY unless you get a fitting. What a scam.” I can’t think of why any store would operate in that way, that’s what I tell her.
Then Elliot’s Office Supply & Gifts N’ Things, Birds & Butterflies “nature store,” the Stoplight Deli, Pitter Patter Children’s Boutique, What’s Cookin’… That’s all I can see from my vantage point, but I know the street extends several blocks in either direction, and there are many more store fronts, some empty like the old dry-cleaners and some hanging on, like the wig store, with all the mannequin heads in the window modeling various hair fashions. The fact that the mannequins aren’t white seems like an act of defiance to me, because this downtown is very much a white downtown. I haven’t seen but one person of color walking around, and it’s the town’s 175th anniversary celebration weekend so anyone who would be out walking around this downtown would be doing it today. Maybe I missed the crowds. Maybe the crowds missed downtown.
The other night my nephew’s friends came by the house. One of the girls was very small but had a rowdy personality, very funny and spicy. My nephew towers above her and had to lean down to give her a hug, but he joked that she was too intimidating and so sat back down. Then she showed us her knives. “Knives plural?” I said. “Yeah, one for each pocket” and she pulled out a flip-open razor blade from her left rear jeans pocket and a flip-open Gerber pocket knife from the right rear pocket. “Got to have these in my neighborhood. Where I live is rough.” She didn’t say it with anger or anxiety. Simply stated it as a fact, rough. I tried to imagine what her neighborhood looks like and envisioned rows of walk-up apartments and puny trees and busted street lamps and then realized I was thinking of someplace I’d been before. Her world I can’t picture at all.
The group of men sitting in this cafe are talking about death and tattoos and the 21st century. “Gotta have one, that’s the thing these days.” “Yeah, MOTHER, hahaha.” “Mel Gibson or Sean Connery has a little dagger right here.” “You don’t know anything about that.”
They have raspy, gasping laughs. Earlier one said “When I go, I want to go in my sleep.” And then they talked about overweight kids and diabetes and McDonald’s and everyone they know who’s died in the past year. One old woman rode a bicycle every day, the same one she’d had since she was young. They can’t fathom riding a bicycle because they can’t remember how.
I’ve been stationary for too long. I can feel stress building up despite the warm bed and hot breakfasts. My body is soft. I try to remember being “on the road” and how good that feels. The short bike trip to the cafe helped, but then I think about how all my stuff is strewn about the guest room and I’ve got to pack it all down again and that task looms impossible. How did I get all that crap here in the first place? Socks shirts jeans vest books pens paper cords cables laptop jacket sleeping bag boots shoes underwear helmet gloves visor hat scarf belt raingear toothpaste toothbrush comb camera film envelopes checks wallet knife flashlight pills loose change… and more. (There must be more.)
It’s just me and the men left in the cafe now. The staff is cleaning up, scooting chairs into place, scooping up coffee grounds, wiping down tables. The awning outside flaps in the wind and when it does the sun strikes me square in the eyes. Down the street is the brewery. I promised my brother I’d go there and drink a beer before I left. He said, “Call me after two beers so you’ll have something to say.” I’m not too good on the phone but he loves to gossip so I said alright, I will. We’re half-Irish and we get rambunctious when we drink. But there are others in the family who you can’t talk to after two drinks, and everyone knows not to call those particular characters after 7pm. If you happen to live with them, well, I guess you’re screwed.
Tomorrow Charleston. An oyster bake at 4pm for four people I don’t know who are sailing across the Atlantic. That’s always been a dream of mine, actually. That tattoo on my arm, the one of a sailboat, means folks constantly ask me if I know how to sail. I don’t. I don’t know how to much of anything really. It’s just that I keep trying.
*”What life adds up to is still a problem” is quoted from Kathleen Stewart’s book Ordinary Affects.
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