The title is the native word for catshit coffee, or literally ‘coffee from the civet cat’.

It’s got almost nothing to do with what I’m thinking about. What the hell kind of distraction is this–good, bad, ugly, cold, dry?

The answer consists of a three syllable grunting song, a noise we make that replaces the words ‘i dun know’.

Say it with me: i’un’owh.

A part of English you won’t find in the dictionary.

The link goes to a site called NordicCoffeeCulture, which is even better than it sounds. It tells about why catshit coffee is even worse than it sounds. You should go read it, work through the distraction, and come back. I know I am.

When I set myself up on the periphery of a big town, the first thing I do is get a mailbox with a street address. In today’s terms I go find a ‘UPS store’ or something like it. The why is complex, and it’s not as useful as it used to be, but it’s still what I do and probably always will.

Then from there I set about locating the necessities. Where is the organic food, nearby? Where is the recycling, since the little towns never do it right … Where is the place to get a massage (this is a new one, born of the stresses I didn’t used to have).

In the current incarnation, I can find most of what I need on a milk run along a thirty-block strip of boulevard stretching west from the mailbox.

There’s one major exception. There is no perfect coffee shop along the lines of North End or Late for the Train or Wild Orchid or even the late great Martha’s Black Dog.

Instead what they’ve got is something rather more snooty and debased. This place has great java, but it’s spendy as hell, even if you’re never going to pay six hundred something a pound for catshit coffee, which I definitely won’t, but I theoretically could. They sell it. So sometimes as a convenience factor I get my coffee there, trading money for time. On yesterday’s run, a pound of Papua New Guinea, ground for french press, cost USD 25 more or less.

I had parked a little ways off in front of what turned out to be a store for walking shoes. They had my kind in the window and I went in and found them. Eighty dollars. I would have bought, but they were too busy to wait on me in a reasonable amount of time, so I just made a note to myself about it and took off. Really what I should do is figure out where the REI is and buy them there. Like the first time–the discovery of the perfect shoe.

This is the way I think during a resource run.

A similar thing happened regarding a bookstore. It used to be that I’d hit one every trip. That’s not so true anymore, mainly because I have too many damn books already, and the job now is to write them, not read them. But sometimes when I’m thinking hard I take advice from the shelves about whatever I am thinking hard about. Sometimes I buy, but really it’s a way to think, a way to be distracted that isn’t just good but almost necessary.

At yesterday’s big chain bookstore, they had an excellent collection, best I’ve seen since the old Page One, of technical books. (There is a sentence redacted here.)

In decades past … I’m still looking … always looking.

For so long I looked, and then for so long I didn’t, because I had done found. Then it all fell apart, and I fetal-positioned in such pain for far too long, and

Now I’m. Rethinking. Everything.

I want so badly to just viciously cut the cord to wage slavery now this minute.

I hate listening to rational prudence instead of to my gutful of seething desire.

But maybe I don’t hate it quite as much as I hated ducking the landlord on the first day of the month.

That fight inside tells you the most essential things about me.

I bore an idea yesterday about where things (that thing especially) could go with a consultancy. I think it’s a pretty good one. But before it could happen, there are three years left on the devil’s bargain, and there is I think whether I like it or not a matter of certifying once or twice or more.

And before that can happen either, it’s a windy Saturday in the middle of nowhere and I have certain chores of the virtuous-distraction type that need addressing; I’ve put them off far too long.