Are Your Distractions Actually Inspirations? (David Intro) (11/28/2020)

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Introduction by David Olimpio.

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I'm writing this the day before Thanksgiving and the day after my birthday, 2020. The three days will be remarkably similar to one-another in that I will have done mostly the same thing—the same routines at the same times and with the same two creatures, my dogs. And while these three days will be remarkably similar to one-another, they will be remarkably dissimilar to past days I've experienced around this week of the Gregorian calendar from 1973 to today, mostly because they will not have been spent in close physical proximity to other humans I love. But in this lack of proximity to humans, these three days will also be remarkably similar to the last 240 or so. And I have reached a point where it does not actually feel all that abnormal or "sad" to spend my birthday and Thanksgiving by myself. In many ways, I'm even more "grateful" than I have been in past years at this time. For my health. For my apartment. For the family and friends I still can connect with over various electronic means. Speaking of my apartment, another thing I am grateful for is the restaurant I live above here in North Philadelphia. I haven't always been grateful for it, though. I have very much had a love-hate relationship with this restaurant. On the one hand, I have really valued the life and vitality it has brought (quite literally) to my doorstep over the last two years. I have needed that life and vitality. I have needed its presence around me, even if I have not always participated in it. On the other hand, with all that life and vitality comes a lot of noise and disturbance at inopportune times. This mostly comes in the form of loud music played on outdoor speakers most of the day and into the night, sometimes until 2 or 3 am. This music happens even in winter, even when nobody is seated at the outdoor tables listening to it, which is perhaps when this music is most annoying and when I most fantasize about going downstairs and snipping the wires to the speakers. When I am trying to write a piece or I am lying in bed at 1 am trying to go to sleep and I can hear through my non-insulated windows (as clearly as if it were playing in my room) the song "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes for the 10th time that week, I do not feel gratitude. There was a time in 1992 when I did like that song. I have not liked it for some time, though. I really do not like it now. And yet there is a sort of strange appreciation I feel when Linda Perry sings, "I scream from the top of my lungs what's going on?!" I feel that scream, in a way I never did before. I have had that same thought many times the last two years: What's going on? How did I get here? How have I've arrived at this point in my life: divorced and living alone in a small apartment after 20 years of marriage with somebody who had also been my best friend and life partner. To be fair, the music situation has gotten much better since the pandemic. They don't stay open as late anymore due to restrictions. Also, I've gotten to know the owner of the restaurant a bit better since Covid hit. We've exchanged phone numbers just in case we needed to get in touch about an emergency when one of us wasn't there. His name is Owen, but when I speak about him to my friends, I refer to him as "My Restaurant Owner." He said I should always just call down and say something if the music is too loud because mostly they just forget that it's on and look, they really do just want to be good neighbors. I said I got that and sometimes I have called down and his staff has always apologized and turned it off, but mostly I didn't do that because I used to be in the restaurant business, I understand how that is. And also, look: I chose to live above a lively bar/restaurant for a reason, which was that I did not want to be alone, even when I was alone. So the last thing I want to do is be somebody who then complains about it.A few weeks ago, the staff locked up the restaurant and went home and left the music on outside. When I went out to walk the dogs before going to bed at around 1 am, which is more or less my normal bedtime, I realized nobody was there. So when I got back inside, got into bed and turned out the light, and even the white noise from my Google speaker didn't drown out the music, I decided I needed to text Owen and let him know that, Hey it's kinda loud downstairs and...btw, nobody's here! He wrote back right away and apologized and sent somebody out to turn off the music. I heard the doors opening and closing downstairs and the street absent of music by around 1:45 am. I texted him back, Thanks. The next day I saw Owen outside and he offered me a free meal for the inconvenience. "How about Thanksgiving?" he said. "We have prepared meals." "Actually that sounds great," I said. It did sound great. I had been contemplating a grocery-store rotisserie chicken and some hastily prepared vegetables as my Thanksgiving meal and this seemed much better.Here's the thing: for all the annoyance I've felt about "my restaurant" and "my restaurant owner" I have truly felt a lot of admiration for Owen and how he has managed the restaurant to adapt to Covid. From my living room, while I'm sitting at my computer working, I have watched him as he has built an entire second restaurant in the street outside my window. Philadelphia, like many other cities probably, has allowed restaurants to put seating in the street and he has erected a pretty sophisticated awning to go over all the tables with propane heating built into the corrugated tin-roof ceiling and heated picnic table seats. He's a handyman in addition to being a restaurateur, so he's done all of this work himself, which I think is kind of awesome.As somebody who worked for years in the restaurant business, I know how hard this period must be for him, but he has handled everything with amazing energy and passion. He has accepted and attacked this crisis in a way I don't think I could have if I were in his shoes. And every day he just does what he does and he seems glad to be doing it. And his business seems to be thriving in spite of everything going on and I think it's really great and I cheer him on quietly.Amidst all the changes happening in my personal life and in the world, I admit I haven't felt a lot of passion or inspiration about writing and I have found it terribly difficult to get down words. And there have been many times where I have heard the noise below me and mentally added that to a list in my head of "hardships" keeping me from writing. But the truth is: there are no hardships in this. In my apartment. In my living situation. I am lucky to be where I am, and I am grateful to be living in this sometimes noisy, storm of an apartment. Being above this restaurant and observing the way it has rebounded and kept on going during this crisis has made me feel a tremendous amount of gratitude. In a strange way, the restaurant has been my companion. The way the door slams shut in the back alley. The way the speakers outside play Radiohead and Kool and the Gang in equal measure. The way the first song most mornings is Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" and the high-pitched "oooh oooh" that starts that song is like a call to morning prayers. All of it has been an inspiration. But I have not always recognized it as such. In this really difficult season of this really difficult year, you might be like me, finding it really difficult to take the time to string words together the way you used to. You might feel distracted by all the noise and chaos around you. By the election. By Covid. By home schooling. By too little space or by too much of it. And so I would just say: try and step outside of it for a few moments this week and ask yourself if those distractions, those things seemingly keeping you from writing, are actually distractions or if they might be inspirations in disguise.Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here. Some good stuff below. Be sure to check it out. Enjoy the remainder of the holiday weekend.David OlimpioPublisher & Editor-in-Chief

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

Atticus Review is happy to announce our 2020 Pushcart Prize Nominees! Thank you to all Atticus Review contributors for your great work.Best of luck to these six nominees: Patrica Caspers, Rick Rohdenburg, Kosiso Ugwueze, Kelly Lindell, Emily Choate, Kelly Gray.READ THEIR WORK

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONINHERITANCEby Danit Brown"Our children, he thought, would be fine even though they were half mine, even though white most of the time isn’t always the same as white."READ ON

POETRYELEGY FOR GABOby Roberto Carlos Garcia"All the tables & chairs are dressedin cheesecloth, the lovers,sex workers, & soldiers you fatheredwait to smell your cologne one last time."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONFREE FALLby Sophie NewmanThe latest in our series Superunknown: Stories About Songs"...when I think about how souls depart this world, I imagine it sounds something like this."READ ON

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