It’s not the drink, it’s the breather. Day done, sun descending. I put on music. If I didn’t finish the crossword at lunch, I give it another pass, or take thirty minutes with a book, maybe a magazine. There’s a sense of a moment lifted, silhouetted from the day. It’s a habit of changing mindset, pressing reset: taking my brain out of the case and giving it an airing-out. I have a music friend who takes the hour for his workout. Another goes straight to the kitchen, turns on the radio, figures out what his family is going to eat. Joan Didion had a tradition, late afternoon, she’d make herself a martini before sitting down to review the pages she’d written that day.
Everything looks better in mild-dark. My mother’s parents had a wet bar off their living room. I remember my grandparents used to dress for dinner, I’d see my grandfather there, early evening, jacket and tie, low lights, crystal. I don’t know why exactly he changed outfits but I want to say, beyond the customs of his day and class, there was a sense of ritual, perhaps ceremony. A friend told me his grandmother called the hour “chippies,” people would come over for chippies, wherein each person got their own bowl of chips to accompany whatever they were drinking.
There’s audio at the University of Virginia of William Faulkner talking about the time, beginning of his career, he became friends with Sherwood Anderson. New Orleans, 1920s, he’d see Anderson write in the morning, take walks in the afternoon, spend the evenings drinking and talking with friends. “And I thought that if that was all it took to be a writer, that was exactly the life for me,” Faulkner says, joking, and the audience laughs – and let’s be frank, the drinking does not work out well for Faulkner, like it doesn’t for many people. Faulkner’s son-in-law once took me around Rowan Oak, the family house in Oxford, Mississippi, he told me horrible stories of what Faulkner put his daughters through as a drunk. But I still love the segmentation if we subtract the addiction aspect: time for contemplation, time for being outdoors, time with family and friends.
So much of a day is disappointment, and a lot of getting older is a drag. But much of being older is pretty wonderful – realizing how little you know, sensing how much there still is to know. What’s odd here, maybe, is I’m often a night worker, same for my wife, who’s also a writer. Not every night, but many, we do an extra shift after dinner, going off to separate rooms. And for me, the early evening break helps me get there, much like a long walk. It’s thirty minutes, maybe an hour, of zero expectations. It’s the pleasure of feeling unlatched.
In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement: Highlights from recent good television and film, remembering one of my favorite musicians, and some of the best things I (re)read this week.
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Meditations in an Emergency is a micro-essay published Saturdays by novelist Rosecrans Baldwin about things he finds beautiful, with a longer essay once a month for subscribers, sent from the woods.
Also for subscribers: a Sunday supplement, three weeks a month, with three-plus ideas of things to love, no paid placements lol 💀
Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles, available from Bookshop, Amazon, or (preferably) your local store. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
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