slate blue afternoon

Reading Dave Eggers in the Heights Coffee shop. An ambience and mood that comes rarely now but used to settle around me all the time. A trio of older (50?) friends, 2 men one woman. Socially imperfect, one man with a nasal voice and irritating and childish way of phrasing things. They have nothing to say to each other for minutes at a time; hold their coffee silently, the air heavy and sticky between them, you can see the shadows of slow lumbering thoughts behind their foreheads but they can’t succumb completely. Must stay aware enough to join a conversation, should one pop through the surface of the swamp. There they sit, poised in a scene without lines. This is how people act; this is how they go out for coffee and what they order and where they sit. They are dressed for the part; their blocking learned but no one directs.

It’s a sad and dispiriting sort of feeling but comforting too. My childhood. Familiar. The 70s shag carpet and crap in the corner and a UHF tv with broken channel dial. Koko on the couch with us, our arms around her furry musty body, ribs rising and falling, and mom puttering in the kitchen or depressed upstairs.

I forgot life could be so nuanced and subtle. That an afternoon could take on a color so hard to mix and describe, a slate blue but not hard, lighter, yielding, more organic. A color that seeps, and stains the pores. It’s not happy, not even content. But I’m glad it exists, I feel God around me and understand that this feeling cannot be written or painted or sung and only God can mix this color. Nobody made this up. I guess I really am here.