My landlords have recently put a patio set out in the back, where the laundry machines are, and this is awesome. There are two chairs, a small glass table, a small potted section of palm tree, and a bucket filled with sand to serve as an ash tray. I don’t smoke, but I do sit, and I do look at the new flowers they’ve planted, and the drying line, hung with someone else’s pants, and the basket of blueberries I’ve brought with me, and my laptop; opened to a new short story that, for some reason, flowed in the rough draft stage but is now stalling in the first several pages. There’s a problem with the language more than anything else, and perhaps the pacing of the opening section, but I can’t figure out what it is.
So I’m eating blueberries and enjoying the weather, which my thermometer says is 16 degrees, which means it’s warm enough to sit outside wearing just my Aran jumper and a pair of slacks. Yesterday it rained and I couldn’t find the swans in the Grand Canal and wondered – where do they go when the weather is bad? I walked up and down Camden Street and looked at rows of brightly colored buildings, stuck together, snaking towards City Centre, shining in the soft damp wet. A butcher, John Lynch the Swan, Flannery’s pub, a homeopathic remedy shop, a stationery boutique, a pet store which only sells birds and fish and hamsters and which is not, as far as I’m concerned, a real pet shop.
I looked at the giant sign that reads THESIS – marking the shop that binds and publishes theses. In just a few months, I will head there myself and hand over my Master’s portfolio. Until I do, the sign seems to wink at me each time I pass by; much larger than the other signs on the street, visible from much farther away.
So I better get back to work on this story. Figure out why I’m having trouble with the start. Listen to Warren G’s “Regulate” and finish off the blueberries and keep an eye out for my laundry. If the sun came out, things would be really nice. If a kitty cat wandered into the backyard, things would be perfect.
EDITED TO ADD:
Bliss.