For the past two weeks, I’ve been checked out. I’ve done very little reading or writing and very little job searching. I’ve taken fewer city walks and spent fewer hours on sun-drenched benches by the water. Instead, I went nocturnal. I’ve spent my days inside wasting time on my computer. I’ve spent my nights out meeting up with friends closing down the local pub and then sleeping in (which still isn’t much past 8am). Maybe this is the storm before the calm, the disruption before the settling in.
I feel close to landing a job. I’ve been doing some work with a local food pantry. I’m a candidate at five different organizations, and I’m in the late round interviews at a few of them. However, this week, the disruptive frenzy continues. I have tickets to three shows: Glass Animals; Everclear with Marcy Playground; and Soul Coughing. I’m scheduled for two more job interviews. I’m supposed to learn to play handball, go on a hike with a friend, attend an art gallery anniversary celebration (maybe), and work/visit a street fair (promoting the food pantry).
I have extra tickets to all three concerts. I haven’t asked anyone to go (yet). With all three shows, I have associations with people who are no longer in my life. With Glass Animals, it’s the woman who introduced them to me and an ex with whom I spent a lot of time listening to them. Everclear and Marcy Playground remind me of that time in my life when I was married. I bought a Marcy Playground CD at a second-hand record shop on one of my ex and my first trips to State College. With Soul Coughing, I’m thinking of my friend Tim who passed away this past June. He’s the first person I’d probably text to say I was going to the show. One of the last texts I had sent to him was a video clip of the song “Busting Up a Starbucks” being performed by the lead singer of Soul Coughing.
As fall approaches, that elusive desire to build something, a small but cozy fortess against the long nights on Fall’s horizon is taking root somewhere deep in my chest. The weather is changing. The light slants differently – dusting everything it touches with the late-season golds and oranges of final harvests. This time of year always tastes of the bittersweet.
To that end, I’ve spent my morning re-rooting myself in poetry – learning how the apples sweeten in the cool of night while we dream.
