I didn’t realize the true beauty of the brief time until it had passed, and I’ve concluded over the last couple of days that the key ingredient to what I know as happiness is being completely unaware of the fact that the meter is indeed running. The time I most clearly recall this happening was the afternoon I floated down a river in southern Oregon. It was years ago, during the summer, and I recall leaning back and looking up at the enormous blue sky, faintly veined with streaks of flimsy clouds. I remember being shocked my feet were by how cold the deep jade colored water was. I remember riding back to Portland that evening and realizing that during the many hours I’d spent on the river, I had not once contemplated what I should have done the day before, or what I should have been doing during those hours I spent in the water, or even what I needed to do that evening, the next day or the next week. I’d been lobotomized, gloriously so, and without even knowing it, of my inner clock, my schedule.
It’s been unusually cold in Portland this week. I had plans to meet a former colleague on Tuesday evening for a happy hour at a bitchy restaurant on the outskirts of downtown in an insufferably precious neighborhood called the Pearl District. The temperature never made it out of the 20s on Tuesday, and it was forecasted to dip down into the high teens with nightfall, which happens at around 4:30 this time of year. I spent most of Tuesday dreading going to meet this woman, who I’d offered to help with her resume. I checked the bus schedule. I looked the restaurant up on the Internet to get the address. I looked in my wallet and realized I was running low on cash. I kept hitting ‘send/receive’ on my e-mail, hoping for a message from her apologizing for the inconvenience she was doubtlessly causing by rescheduling. The message didn’t arrive, so I wrapped myself up and left the house at a few minutes after four, even though I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening with my soup and candles and the evening news. I did not want to go.
Hot chocolate is one of those things that almost never occurs to me. I like it sweet, but only slightly so. There is a perfect pitch that hot chocolate sometimes achieves, and while I cannot describe it, I know it when I taste it – or don’t. On Tuesday evening I arrived at the restaurant early, as I often do, and when I realized I had a half an hour to spare I went outside and noticed a coffee shop a block down the street. I grabbed one of the free newspapers and ordered a large cup of hot chocolate and a fudge brownie and for the next 27 or 28 minutes I cannot tell you, really, what I thought about because, quite simply, I didn’t think about anything. I sat at a round table in front of a big window. The two women behind the counter talked about which stores have the best deals on Christmas ornaments. What appeared to be hundreds of chandeliers blazed brightly in a storefront across the street. The whipped cream on top was cold, but not menacingly so. The bottom layer of it melded with the hot liquid beneath it. The chocolate sprinkles on top reminded me, briefly, of mouse turds. The traffic hummed by, a blur of tail lights from where I sat. The brownie was slightly warmed and spongy, but it was also crunchy, sort of, a little. A few people left and a few people arrived, and each time the door opened and closed I felt enveloped in a sheathe of cold, each molecule of which evaporated quickly, replaced by tiny fragments of warmth that expanded rapidly like tiny cells multiplying beneath a microscope. I wasn’t uncomfortably full, but I was no longer hungry either (I skipped lunch on Tuesday for some reason). I realized that if I’d finished a large mug of hot chocolate and eaten a brownie, it was probably time to go, so I did, and it wasn’t until I was outside on the sidewalk headed for the restaurant that I noticed the newspaper, sitting on the table right where I’d put it, unread.
It’s been unusually cold in Portland this week. I had plans to meet a former colleague on Tuesday evening for a happy hour at a bitchy restaurant on the outskirts of downtown in an insufferably precious neighborhood called the Pearl District. The temperature never made it out of the 20s on Tuesday, and it was forecasted to dip down into the high teens with nightfall, which happens at around 4:30 this time of year. I spent most of Tuesday dreading going to meet this woman, who I’d offered to help with her resume. I checked the bus schedule. I looked the restaurant up on the Internet to get the address. I looked in my wallet and realized I was running low on cash. I kept hitting ‘send/receive’ on my e-mail, hoping for a message from her apologizing for the inconvenience she was doubtlessly causing by rescheduling. The message didn’t arrive, so I wrapped myself up and left the house at a few minutes after four, even though I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening with my soup and candles and the evening news. I did not want to go.
Hot chocolate is one of those things that almost never occurs to me. I like it sweet, but only slightly so. There is a perfect pitch that hot chocolate sometimes achieves, and while I cannot describe it, I know it when I taste it – or don’t. On Tuesday evening I arrived at the restaurant early, as I often do, and when I realized I had a half an hour to spare I went outside and noticed a coffee shop a block down the street. I grabbed one of the free newspapers and ordered a large cup of hot chocolate and a fudge brownie and for the next 27 or 28 minutes I cannot tell you, really, what I thought about because, quite simply, I didn’t think about anything. I sat at a round table in front of a big window. The two women behind the counter talked about which stores have the best deals on Christmas ornaments. What appeared to be hundreds of chandeliers blazed brightly in a storefront across the street. The whipped cream on top was cold, but not menacingly so. The bottom layer of it melded with the hot liquid beneath it. The chocolate sprinkles on top reminded me, briefly, of mouse turds. The traffic hummed by, a blur of tail lights from where I sat. The brownie was slightly warmed and spongy, but it was also crunchy, sort of, a little. A few people left and a few people arrived, and each time the door opened and closed I felt enveloped in a sheathe of cold, each molecule of which evaporated quickly, replaced by tiny fragments of warmth that expanded rapidly like tiny cells multiplying beneath a microscope. I wasn’t uncomfortably full, but I was no longer hungry either (I skipped lunch on Tuesday for some reason). I realized that if I’d finished a large mug of hot chocolate and eaten a brownie, it was probably time to go, so I did, and it wasn’t until I was outside on the sidewalk headed for the restaurant that I noticed the newspaper, sitting on the table right where I’d put it, unread.
