By mid-morning I was feeling lost. I wanted something different, but didn’t know how to get from here to there or there to somewhere else. It was sunny and temperate and I could feel that if I wasn’t careful, I just might lose the day. A sense of trepidation was setting in – about what, I wasn’t sure. The night before I had been listening to music – a heavy dose of Wild Child and their songs of push-pull love, longing, and leaving. Maybe the morning malaise was a hangover from too many songs or maybe it was the mild disappointment in resolving to talk to new people at the bar yet slinking back into old habits and old conversations. Something felt off.
By lunchtime, I was starting to shake it off and craving the sun. I earbudded up, grabbed a book, my notebook, a hoodie, and walked towards the Bay. The Bay never has any answers but always changes my mood. It seldom disappoints. In addition to the heavy dose of Wild Child, I’ve been diving into the songs of Mike Doughty, the lead singer from Soul Coughing. There’s something about his phrasing and word choice that makes me want to write. At the Bay, I wrote. Nothing much, snippets and observations – phrases that might work their way into a poem, but will probably be forgotten before I get to them. On the walk home, more Mike Doughty. New to me and on heavy rotation (hence the title of this post):
and this:
and this:
It’s dinner time now. The windows in my apartment face east. The buildings in the distance shine golden-white in the setting sun. I’ll avoid the heavy songs on my evening walk, maybe take a swinging ax to that earlier malaise.