things I love this Friday

I am not expected today, sitting here in the upstairs, watching the people who are - expected, that is - drive and walk and bike and hustle

I am not necessarily needed today by any one person to do any one thing and even more so by myself. My skills sets are put away on a spot so dusty from laying bare. Surely, if I were asked to be relevant today, I would say no.

Today, I am steeped in vices of chocolate and coffee and paper that is so smooth and thin as to be opaque. If paper were a bird, these pages are the downy feathers. The prized and the protected. The very things that weedle my ear and my heart, the ones that beg me to sit and visit.

I ordered 'oh, just a cup of coffee' and the man behind the counter told me they don't have that, that they do have incomparable coffee, though, if I'd like to try some. And, instinctively, I almost called him Clark. When I got my chocolate cake I could see the indent where the girl working started cutting, and then remeasured and opted for a bigger slice.

To some, coffee is a business partner. To me, she wears yoga pants and takes the expectations you tote around and coddle as a child, bounces the bundle on one cocked hip. You see her firmly planted bare feet and angled knees and are assured that you can take a seat.

And she listens while she does the dishes and straightens the house that is your heart until you say something particularly distressing and then she will settle, cross-legged on the floor and nod and take what you came to give her.

And once you have said or written or relayed this, it is real and tangible and you can handle it. Before it shook your hand it was flitting and shadowy and you cannot reason with a phantom of a thought.
I am at a meeting, to do this very thing today and to run the figures of who I am in the city.

To chart and graph and introduce myself to what is being added to this small town girl. Evaluating the relationships that I am building and how I am constructing them, which part of myself I am contracting out to do this.

This girl in Salt Lake City is more shy than in rumors I'd heard before moving. She is shockingly picky about her meat. Seeing her here, without expectation, I know her just as well as I knew her in Salida, in high school, and I realize that people talk to me like all of these things are from some past life. Like there is a difference between then and now and sure, there are differences, but I haven't jumped the tracks; I'm not running on a different timeline than I ever was; I am still living my life.

My favorite season is coming, you can see it creeping in around the edges.

It is almost the time of year  that hoodies wait for on their coat hooks and that is so thrilling to me. To know that soon the air will be cool on your cheeks and the trees will sing.

And knowing that fall is coming, I left the coffee shop and stumbled upon the city library. The four story city library.

And I do what I always do in libraries anywhere but Salida. I found Kent Haruf and said hello.

It makes me feel like the world is maybe a bit more smallish than I thought, or that Salida is a bit more far-reaching than I thought but whichever one it is doesn't matter; I am still that much closer to the Arkansas River.

I got a library card and I got dizzy from being on the fourth floor looking down to the first. I went back outside and trailed along with my camera and found out that even litter can be beautiful. Before you pick it up and throw it away.

And I also got very excited for fall in the city.