The Tuesday I Went Somewhere Else Instead

March twenty-ninth. There is something I did not write about when it happened, which means it belongs here now, in the lag.

It was a Tuesday, not a climbing Tuesday, which is the easier way to say it. I had seen a flyer at the community center, the kind that gets pinned next to the rock-climbing schedule and the pottery brochure, and for no specific reason I took a photo of it on my phone. A local band. A bar about six blocks east of my usual radius. A Tuesday night. I stood in the lobby looking at the photo for thirty seconds and then I went home and registered for nothing, decided nothing, and then on the night itself I put on a jacket I don't wear to the gym and went.

I could not tell you the name of a single song they played. I could tell you that the floor vibrated with the bass and that there were amber lights above the bar and that the tables were close enough together that you were automatically in the room with strangers, whether you wanted to be or not. I sat at a table by myself and a person at the neighboring table asked if I wanted them to take a photo and I said yes mostly because it felt rude to say no, and that is how these exist. I stayed for both sets.

between sets. deciding to stay.

I have been thinking about it in the context of the camera thread, the one I wrote about in March with the cord shadow, because I did not take a single frame that night. Not the stage. Not the amber light on the wall, which was genuinely worth photographing. Not my drink, which was water, which tells you everything about my constitution on a work week. I carried the camera in my bag and did nothing with it, which is the arc's answer in miniature, or maybe just the same answer in a different room. The bar exists six blocks east. The Tuesday was ordinary. I went somewhere else instead of the gym and came home knowing I would not write about it until I had sat with it for a while.

caught mid-listen.

The cord is still on the windowsill. Gerald has a new leaf coming. The bar has probably changed the flyer by now.