(The close of business yesterday, making neat stacks).

I feel a little weird. Maybe it’s the weather, or something like that.

It is gray outside, deep gray, not raining enough to stop the pounding on the concrete I sit at the computer most of the day, either commenting on the follies committed in our town or railing at the lunacies being perpetuated overseas.

The Storm track for Hurricane Joaquin has been published. The possibilities, as they are for everything, range from no big deal to catastrophic. A pal sent me the graphic so I could plan my trip to the Class Six Store accordingly. It never ceases to amaze me that we have such a variance in the possibilities of a single storm, and everyone accepts it, while simultaneously accepting the assertion of the climate community that they are certain they can predict with “High Confidence” what the atmosphere is going to be doing in thirty or fifty years. Of course it is easy to have that level of certainty about things that may- or may not- come about after we are safely in our graves.

But perhaps I was just letting the weather get to me. It was a cool summer and all I can do is pray that this winter will not be as brutal as the last one. I was thinking about that in the late afternoon gloom yesterday. I glanced at the clock. It was just about the right time to be headed out to Willow. Which no longer exists, of course.

I think it was the the first time I realized that it really was, no shit, over. Not going to the office any more I am down a quart on real daily human contact. I get a nice hug from Rhonda in the morning when I check for the mail, and stay plugged in to various crises in the building, and who has died. But that is about it during the day, and it only now is hitting home that the dozens of people I would see each day, and the little circle of acolytes at the Amen Corner with all our collective issues, romances, affairs, disasters, triumphs and tribulations.

I sat down in my brown chair. I could have gone over to Lyon Hall and continued the process of meeting a new crowd. I shrugged as the workmen outside put up the temporary barriers at the end of their day to keep people from stealing 700-pound chunks of concrete. I turned on the flat screen to watch the news, and something had knocked out the cable box.

There were some old shows I could watch, I thought, since the internet was still up. I couldn’t mash the buttons to make it happen, though. The silence was oppressive and it started to make me squirm.

Ah, I thought. This is what loneliness feels like. I had forgotten why I started to go to Willow to begin with.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303