By Bart Barry-
SAN ANTONIO – There’s a coffeehouse and bar concept called Halcyon in the south-downtown part of this city called Southtown and what brought me here the first time years ago were the make-your-own open-flame s’mores they bravely serve under the paintings local artists hang for-sale on their walls. What brought me here this afternoon was the eclectic crowd that assembles on Sundays and Mondays. If this column is about boxing at all its author’ll be surprised.
There’s a finch nest tattered in the corner above the window that reflects beside my seat. The nest hung there a month or so and by design was unnoticeable unless you were seated directly beneath it when an occupant flew home or you were an airborne predator and in the second case it was still necessarily unnoticeable. The nest came apart a half hour ago when the wind took the dominant strand away and the unraveling accelerated to disorder. The occupants returned a few minutes ago, a couple – not unlike the folks who just sat across from me on a couch fractionally comfortable as it looks and we’ll see how long they endure it. The finches have no apparent memory how was the nest when they departed but recognized instantly the place they alighted on is uninhabitable currently but shows potential as a home with some repairs – a fixerupper possibly in foreclosure. They set off fusslessly on their task and collect from the ground a blessedly large collection of twigs – what good fortune, this! – that is their former nest unbeknownst to them.
The lass across from me is attractive but covered in tattoos each with a story and pretty clearly in the throes of a tinder date with a douchebag of sorts who nonetheless satisfies the Texas female’s one mating requirement: He is tall. He’s whispering to her about me and it raises an interesting question for any writer: Did he know I thought this about him before I read what I’d written and realized I thought this about him because I didn’t realize I’d noticed him so much as the finches, much less like a competitor, till the beginning of this runon sentence? They’re giggling girlishly now (about my hat probably) and it brings to mind the timeless wisdom of Sir Mix-A-Lot: “I’m a giggle wit’em, ‘cause I wanna get wit’em.”
It’s later than usual and that keeps the brunch crowd from occupying too many tables and it makes the mix in Halcyon right now quite good – modellish women, bearded men, students, lesbians, a few toddler siblings dressed in matching purple outfits by their conscientious mom. The temperature is rising unfortunately because there’s only so much of the good fight any establishment might wage against the summer suffocation of South Texas and if the cooling system kept things below 75 when the place was 1/3 full it’s got no chance against the arrival of the second- and third-third. Its initial emptiness signed departed South Texans, our townsfolk off and enjoying the holiday elsewhere, and much as one hoped the city removed itself to Calgary or Montreal to enjoy rejuvenating climes the greater likelihood is folks who’d otherwise be here brunching were instead floating inebriatedly southwards on one of our many waterways.
Even a year ago I might’ve glanced at a boxing calendar on some site or other before writing a column about not writing a boxing column but it didn’t cross my mind last night when the idea for this column scurried on in. That marks its own demarcation of an extraordinary sort: There was a time I started worrying about my next column Tuesday morning and chastised myself openly if Wednesday evening didn’t bring a workable plan. While I haven’t quite drawn a bead on what my more honorable and mechanical self of 2005 should’ve opined about the writer I am now I suspect he’d have been amused – an appreciation of absurdity being the one thing that held constant in the boiling variable stew of this last decade. Or so I hope.
A good column in a good paper this morning returned me to a months-old pledge to read more Rudyard Kipling and so I enjoyed “The Drums of the Fore and Aft” before going to Central Library, this city’s colorful architectural event that comprises a Botero sculpture in the front atrium and Chihuly glass in its middle. There was a time a tale of cowardice and redemptive courage such as Kipling’s on a Sunday morning would’ve won a tangential inclusion in the week’s column. Instead its allusion here is direct and freely unrelated. Read Kipling because he’s imaginative and not in order to learn something.
Funnily enough the working title for this column was to be “Planning a trip to Johannesburg instead of writing a column” – as planning was what I’d planned to be do doing – but thoughts of a short and wonderfully cheap flight to Cape Town midway through a two-week stay in South Africa seemed unacceptably premeditated when set below all that preceded. It’s something like intuition the way these destinations get chosen or a feeling assembled preconsciously of sounds and images and promised delight from Dublin to Barcelona to Bogota to Joburg.
And now I’m going to mention the young lady who replaced the tall-n-tatted couple on the lima-green sofa, in a faded midnight-blue blouse with upsidedown pink elephants marching between paisleys because I just imagined a conversation with her in which I’d tell her I’m writing about the rebuilding birds’ nest reassembling above us in lieu of writing about boxing and after a 20-minute soliloquy about creative process at the end of which she’d say in exasperation she was overdue at her boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s place I’d tell her to check this column the next morning and see if I was joking when I said I’d mention her.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry