The daily struggle continues. It seems silly to call it a struggle (comparatively speaking). First world problems of privilege and comfort – finding time to read, write, exercise… feeling guilty because each evening I let chunks of time slip by. I wrote a little this weekend (mostly what’s below). I’ve exercised a few days in a row and then promptly gave myself a pass because instead of exercising, I wrote a few poems this morning. There are lots of days when, just as I’m packing up at the end of the day, I feel motivated to go home and do a bit more work and have a productive evening of writing or painting or something other than mindlessness. By the time I get home, feed and walk the dog, and eat, I’m ready for a nap and any notion of productivity has been transformed into something not quite as dire as malaise – more like a waiting: for inspiration, or news, or something that grabs my interest.
Because I haven’t posted in a while – I’ll put up the incomplete thoughts from the weekend. Knowing it’s been sitting here on my computer, unfinished, has been a form of writer’s block. An “I should get back to that, but it wasn’t going anywhere, so why bother” type of paralysis. I know I wanted to write about going out alone. I wanted to write about something I read on a blog (about writing 1,000 words every day even if they’re garbage). I wanted to write about feeling a little unmoored. I wanted to write about chance encounters like the time I was on a road trip from PA to TN and met a woman waiting in line to see Ruby Falls – and how a few weeks later we decided to rent a cabin and go hiking in Virginia. I couldn’t cram all of that in to one post – yet it felt connected. I got as far as going out to a local bar last Friday night and the importance of third spaces.
There are times when I feel like…. hand-me-down furniture? This is what I’m typing – sitting at a bar, trying to look busy or like I’m texting with friends…. A slightly worn and broken-in leather chair? Times that I feel like I’ve been around a bit, a weathered observer in a dimly lit corner. Spend a few years testing out who you are and traveling around on your own will do that to you. In the last four years I’ve almost moved to St. Louis, Winston-Salem, Martinsburg, WV, Everett, WA, and Jackson, TN. I visited all of those places, except WA. In that same time period, I’ve lived in Yardley, Philly, Memphis, and now State College. As I try things and places and people on for size, I try to blend in, disappear, and secretly hope to be noticed… to find my place, to leave myself open to happenstance and chance encounters. When I want to, I can fit in well enough, but maybe not entirely, and I’ve gotten pretty used to that. I settle in as a quiet spectator – less obtrusive than a house-guest. I embrace the role of the stranger and sometimes it’s a strange, strange land.
Friday night I went to a bar. A place in town called Doggie’s Pub. They welcome dogs. Sadly, mine isn’t ready for that scene yet – he’d be too much of a jerk. It, the pub, used to be a bar called the Rathskeller. Before being bought and closed and remodeled, it was a dive of a bar that claimed to be the oldest continuously operating bar in the state. It’s still a bit of a dive, but it’s been cleaned up. It has more open space and is less cave-like than it used to be. I wanted the old place to stay. There was a dispute over rent – the new owners of the building apparently forced the old bar out. For a while, I practiced my own personal boycott – though it was pretty much a silent boycott that consisted of me being pouty and avoiding the place.
I went there wanting to see what they’ve done to the space and because I’m looking for “my place.” In Memphis, I had the Green Beetle, Café Keough, and the Flying Saucer. In Philly it was Bishop’s Collar, and in Bucks County it was a few places (Isaac’s, John and Peter’s, The Continental, Revere). Third spaces – not work, not home but something that feels communal – are important. I usually look for a park, a pub, a coffee shop, and maybe a bookstore to call my own. Even when I travel, these are the things I seek out. Places of comfort.
I have my preferences when it comes to bars and other third spaces. I like places that make it easy to be alone but also part of a crowd. I like places that have ample bar seating or bistro/café tables, discrete corners where it’s easy to be out of the way, outside spots in patches of sun. Unfortunately, a lot of spaces, especially outside spaces, are designed for groups… tables for four or six and picnic benches. They seldom have a bar where one can belly up and sit. I can’t explain why, but sitting at a table by myself surrounded by groups of people feels like having a spotlight on me and my solo-ness. I almost always choose the traditional bar stool over the table. So, on Friday, when the weather was perfect, I walked around the outside space at Doggie’s, surveyed the groups of college kids, and went inside to hide at the basement bar. I felt awkward and out of place – and while I’ve done this plenty of times before, I’m out of practice.
There was no TV on which I could focus and pretend I was interested in whatever game would have been on. There were three or four locals sitting a few seats away. I checked my phone constantly as a way of giving me something to do – a kind of fidgeting I suppose… a way of doing something other than sitting at a bar staring ahead at the row of taps or the fridge full of beer or the bottles of liquor lined up on the shelf. There’s something uncomfortable about being in public and not being engaged in some sort of activity (talking with friends, watching TV, reading, watching the band). We can all conjure the image of the guy (it’s almost always a guy) sitting at the bar, staring at his drink that he tilts and rolls on it’s bottom edge – whisky on rocks, beer bottle on cocktail napkin. It’s that image, that I wish to avoid portraying – perhaps because it’s so cliché. It’s that image that, pre-pandemic, I had gotten over or at least gotten somewhat comfortable with…
That’s where I stopped. Not sure where to go with it and a little uncomfortable writing about being a barfly on a Friday night. Thinking about some of the people I’ve met and stories I’ve heard and wondering if Doggie’s Pub has that type of potential. On Saturday, I drove out to a small town where a local brewpub has music and food in a field by the firehouse. I sat in the sun on a grassy hillside listening to the band. They apologized for the pauses and tuning and small hiccups. They too were out of practice and getting reacquainted with spaces that used to be so familiar.