Sunday from the Porch
Daydream
There’s a version of Hooch that’s been taking shape in my mind recently. The way a room comes into focus when your eyes adjust to the light.
I’ve been letting myself look at it more directly lately.
It’s morning. My department heads know well where to find me. No standing meeting. Just a window in my day they know to look for. By the time they walk in, I’ve already gotten my own day started. We give ourselves an hour. Coffee. We talk the way people do when they trust each other and have work in common: new groups that need outfitting, a brand looking to collaborate, a maker who just moved to town in search of studio space, a yoga instructor interested in the morning slot. We look at what’s moving and what’s stalled. Nothing urgent. Everything considered.
Formal meetings fill the afternoon. In between, I work through the things I should be doing. By three or four, I let that go and move toward the things I want to be doing: checking in with collaborators, unboxing and testing new gear, passion projects, housekeeping. The day slows. People start heading out, a quick check-in on their way through the door. See you tomorrow, we say.
What I keep returning to, though, isn’t the rhythm of the day. It’s what’s underneath it.
Matchbox Twenty, Fleetwood Mac, Sublime, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, and other familiar friends over the speakers. The smell of cardboard in the mornings. That productive, particular smell, the one that means something arrived and needs attention. During operating hours, the store’s signature scent settles in: oaky, smoky, something masculine with a quiet note of rose water. By evening, whatever’s keeping the lights on shifts everything. A food truck in the parking lot, a baking class in the kitchen, a bonfire out back. I can feel the day moving through my body. My back and arms and chest and legs, stronger from a more active life. I can see the people helping bring it to life. The way my office looks. The way the it all feels.
I don’t usually let myself go there that specifically. But only for the sake and power of visualization. There’s something that happens when you stop approximating the future. I tend to hold it loosely. Describe it in general terms. Leave enough room to avoid being wrong about it. That version stays soft. And soft things are hard to build toward.
This one didn’t feel soft. I knew what the morning smelled like. I knew what four in the afternoon felt like. I knew who I’d say goodnight to on the way out the door. And every time I sit with it, it feels less like something I’m imagining and more like something I’m slowly growing toward; a life that, when I picture it clearly enough, already feels like mine.