Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

The liberation of nothing

I did nothing this weekend. NOTHING. It was both depressing and liberating. I really do enjoy being in my apartment when it starts to get cold out, when it’s chilly outside and the thoughts about holidays and winter first fill my head, and long before I realize how shitty the insulation and heating in this place really is, when the January wind pounds through the windows at eighty miles an hour. But for a short period, there’s that warm feeling of being inside with a crisp and cozy amount of heat in the place, and the feeling of cold outside, and a good video to watch and maybe a nice drink and something to eat and an afternoon on the couch thinking good thoughts. I don’t know, I think growing up with a woodburning stove changed my internal wiring somehow. My parents got this giant cast-iron Fischer stove and had an installer build a little “stage” for it in the family room, along with a wall of bricks and a big chimney. And since I was a kid, there’s some kind of social aspect to being warm. You come home to a cold house, and someone starts the fire, and it heats up the whole room, the whole house, and that feeling, that dry heat in the air while you sit on the couch with everyone else, watching TV and waiting for supper, it somehow sticks with you. It seems so much more human, or communal, than just pressing a button or setting a thermostat. And I guess now, even when the impersonal steam heat kicks through the radiators, it reminds me of that comfort.

So yeah, no going out this weekend. I’m also taking it easy on the wallet and preparing for another round with the dentist tomorrow. This will be for another post insertion, another piece of titanium that will be with me forever, or until I do a Bruce Willis-12 Monkeys and tear it out so the men from the future can’t track me anymore.

Not much else. I think I’m going to read some Lester Bangs before bed.