Manic Bookstore Cafe

Here's another post I started a while ago, in the second week of the pandemic, March 2020. Not sure I understood at the time just how lonely this world-wide catastrophe would make many people, just how sad the spread of disease would be, just how many victims would die. The medical advances that led to the vaccines were quite amazing, really. Not at all a "miracle" but based on solid science. But the resistance to that science suggests that we are not living in a rational world. Nonetheless, running kept me sane.  In March 2020 I started running more than usual -- five one morning, 2.7 one afternoon, a Saturday 4 miler. And I began to remember the words in the title of this post. Apparently I had no idea where they came from -- only now, with a bit of Wikipedia research, am I tempted to look up Alan Sillitoe's 1959 short story or its subsequent British New Wave film version. But running can be lonely, that is for sure, which must be why this phrase stuck with me. It s

On Monday we paid off our house. It seemed like the thing to do -- we love the idea of no mortgage payment, of not being in bed with the banks. I was prompted to take this admittedly loony step (we had a 3.25% mortgage and we are fortunate to have regular employment, so we have been able to afford our payments) by the pandemic. The crazy stock market during the pandemic got me thinking that money is ephemeral. I freaked out that some savings I had in the form of stock melted away in late February 2020, and I was surprised when they reemerged later. This stock boom just feels wrong given all the suffering of the past 18 months--and it also feels surreal, like it should probably not last. The "money" was in my account, but I recognized that it could be gone tomorrow. Better to put it into the house. In the meantime, I've not been blogging at all and I was thinking of doing some more writing when I came across this unpublished post from autumn 2015. Still pretty relevant, an