We set the coffeemaker to go off at 3 and it did. I got back from the airport before 5 and walked to the lake in the rain without an umbrella to see if anything happened and my friend Tim Ziegler was there, who did the music programming for Hear Music and Starbucks, who picked the songs for the discs: that Father’s Day all he wanted was his family to leave the house so he could listen to the new Sonic Youth album, the one with Rain on Tin, that they could make a whole song out of that sound, that builds and drops, a soundtrack for the sea.

And when we got off work delivering pizzas on the nightshift that summer in Maryland we’d gather up blankets and beers and drive down to the beach while it was still dark and the sand was wet from the surf, and the others went out on their boards if the tide was up but I stayed back with a girl who worked the front counter and played my favorite CD on the boom box for her, which she said she liked, but she was saying something more by the way she said it.

Getting the keys for the first time to open the café on Carson Street and playing whatever music I wanted as loud as I wanted — putting the bagels and ashtrays out, brewing coffee into airpots, counting the till.

The mornings in Stratford-upon-Avon I walked alone to the dog park to watch the dawn and felt like I’d done something, I’d gotten up to write. Taking pictures fooling myself I could take some of it home with me.

I get to the end of our gravel road unsure which way to turn but always go right, and there are pictures of a cat who’s gone missing several weeks and needs medication, and I think they should probably take the signs down now.

Categories: musings

Tags: creative non-fiction, Memoir, Sonic Youth, stream-of-consciousness, travel, William Pearse writer, writing