‹ Back

Had the job interview. Don’t know how I feel about that, since I don’t know if I want the job. Ah well. Whatever will be, will be. I am happy I did well. And I did. I think. Do I hope?

 

Sitting in Jitters Cafe on 4th, after having bought new shoes and a few records. It’s good to be up 4th. Don’t get here much. A lot of memories.

 

…

 

I forgot this laptop when I left the cafe. I got home, settled for a bit, then went into my bag and the laptop was not there. Panic. I got my grandpa to give me a ride back to the cafe, but it was already closed. Jermaine arrived just as I we were about to leave and wanted his presence, but he turned her down for me and she was quite upset. I’ve asked him to apologize for me, since it was basically fruitless to even go since I knew the cafe was closed…. But there was a chance. Etc. Etc. That sort of logic.

 

Went back, opened a bottle of chianti, which I finished by the end of the night. I feel it in my head today. It was one of the few times I would say I needed the numbing effects of drinking too much. Not everything on there was backed up; none of this project, the parts that I haven’t posted, have been backed up. Three years of poetry would be gone.

 

I’ll fix that presently.

 

Anyway, I made the pasta I had been going to make. While draining that bottle. It was one of the best bowls of pasta I’ve ever made—that, at least. Lamb sausage, spinach, peppers, mushrooms, minced garlic, onion, etc. The nice stuff. A splash or two of that wine. Silver lining.

 

Testament to how important this writing is to me, how upset I was. I got drunk and started ranting about bleak things.

 

I did not sleep well. I slept okay until about 4:30, when the numbing effects of the wine had worn off enough for me to wake up with a dry mouth and tension. I was also too hot. I turned off the heater and took off my pyjamas and was able to doze a bit for a few hours. Did not care enough about anything to do something about the dry mouth. It felt like nothing mattered. I slipped in and out of both nightmares and visions of happy resolutions that were more-or-less also nightmares, because I would come out of them and remember they were lies. Eventually, it was time to get out of bed. I lingered for a bit and then did so. Speaking to nobody, I got a cup of coffee and sat on the bed waiting for it to be time to go. I tried calling the cafe a couple more times. Pointlessly, as they were closed—but maybe someone was there setting up?

 

Anyway. Got dressed. Got the ride over. Went in three minutes before they were open. Before I said a word, they handed me my laptop from behind the counter. I nearly cried from joy when I saw the familiar happy stickers on the back of it.

 

Apparently, the people at the table next to mine, UBC students I’d talked to briefly, had noticed my laptop there about five seconds after I’d gone out the door. One of them had tried to run after me, but hadn’t seem me. I remember having run to make a light, and then been across the street. The downside of walking too fast. (But it had been such a lovely day—I remember waiting at the bus stop taking photos of the clear skies and the green trees of the view back towards the plaza at Maple. If I get my laptop back anyway, I’ve glad the peace of that moment was not ruined). So, they went back and handed it over to the owner, who put it behind the counter. Where it stayed safely until I came and took it back. It is comforting to know it was safe and secure within about thirty seconds.

 

It’s a nice cafe. Used to go there with my mom when I was a kid, when we were up 4th, which was about twenty years ago now. Not much has changed. Jazz cafe: records up on the wall, the sounds of Getz and Coltrane and Fitzgerald wafting over the room. Good sandwiches and little date squares. Good coffee. You pay for it all at the end, which had thrown me off and may have been why I forgot the laptop. Anyway: I ordered two breakfast sandwiches (one for me, one for my grandpa because he’d been driving me around), and two coffees (one for me, one for my mom because she’d put up with my drunken bleakness), and left them an over the top tip. Because they’d made me so happy I could cry.

 

Anyway, here I am typing this on the laptop I had already begun to mourn. My head hurts from the wine, and I am glad it was a nice chianti and not a cheap one that would’ve knocked me out for the day. Note to self: do not do that again.

It’s amazing how much things are okay until suddenly they are not, and how much of a redemption it is when they are okay again after all. And how silly and paltry these problems seem out the other side.

 

I should get to packing. England in a couple of days. That’s what I had been doing before crisis erupted.