Sitting here, doing a writing in Duoly Rob for the last time for this blog. Probably not the last time I sit here. I hope it’s not.

A cold and quiet morning and it’s all nice and pleasant and all of those other things that sound good to say. I don’t know. It’s going to be a good day, I hope. A busy day. Just another day through the threads of time weaving themselves in and out of my life, visiting me here and there.

It’s nice sitting here. I feel it’s a place that will end up disappearing. I know I’ve said that before, but I do believe it. I believe it with all of my heart, and there’s just something that I can’t shake. The change in atmosphere, perhaps. The changing of the times. The Glebe Business curse, or some such nonsense that I’m making up on the spot, though a good few businesses in Glebe do close down, though I imagine that it’s not much more than in any other area you care to imagine.

There used to be this older guy who came into Duoly Rob. Maybe he still does and it’s never at the times I’m here. I don’t know. But he used to come here and I haven’t seen him in a while. It makes me think of all the lives that come into cafés. All the regulars who suddenly stop being regular. Who leave their presence here, and then never come back to claim it for whatever reason, and slowly it’s eroded away. Just memories that fray until they are indistinct, and all there is left is a vague feeling of something. I don’t know.

We come across so many people in our lives. So many interactions, so many personalities, and then one day they are gone, and maybe we don’t notice at first. Maybe it takes a while to get there, to see, to realise. You might be doing nothing with your time, or just out somewhere and for some reason they pop back into your head. You remember them and you wonder, but you never got contact details. You only know that they were there and then they weren’t.

Maybe that’s why the place you loved started feeling different. Something you couldn’t put your finger on. It wasn’t just the place. It wasn’t just the building. It was the personalities that came in and that you grew to know. You learned about their lives and their journeys, and you told them some of yours, and there were laughs and passion, but in a sort of quiet, calm way.

Maybe you never interacted with them at all, but there was something about them being there. Their disappearance, their lack of returning makes you feel it. And it’s odd. However, as always, things change.

I’ve been mentioning change a fair bit recently, and maybe it’s just where my mind is. This blog ending is change, my staying out of call centres is change. There are a lot of things that indicate change, and time passes and all that. Right now, Duoly Rob changes, but it’s still here. It still exists, even if it is not the same as it once was.

Being at this café, coming across it and deciding to get breakfast from it one morning helped me out far more than I’d like to admit, because it was a routine that I could stick to. It still is a routine I can stick to, and that’s great. I still enjoy it here, but how many more times will I come here? I know I will after today. I know that, at the very least, I have a few more visits in me. However, things tend to drift away, and maybe I am, too. I don’t know. I feel part of the furniture at the moment. Is that a good thing? I don’t know.

I don’t mind being known at a café, but sometimes I prefer a sense of anonymity. Just a brief blip, a visitation in a day, soon to be forgotten. There but not existing. Just part of the background noise. Sometimes I love to be known, to be thought of. Sometimes I just want to be visible, I guess.

But all things change, and soon I will be writing again. Beyond today. Beyond this blog. I’ll be stringing words together, trying to make sense of the world around me. Trying to get across an impression of my environment in a way I haven’t in a long time. I don’t know if I can do it, but I am going to try. Always do. Always will.

I’m not looking to write a book. Or rather, not a novel. There are pitches I have in mind for books, but I am not looking to write one. Instead, I am looking at what lies ahead. I have ideas, and some of them don’t fit neatly into From Somewhere out the Back, or into Culture Eater either. I need to see what happens, where they go. I need to chase them over time, see what they tell me, and I need to try and be quiet about it, too. Some of that may mean leaving places behind, starting over. Finding a new way through life. That could mean leaving Duoly Rob behind, and I don’t know if I’d mind. It’s a pleasant café. I like it here. However, perhaps my time is up with this place, and I’ll be a memory that gradually frays over time until there is nothing left other than a vague feeling.

This is getting a bit more emotional than I had intended, but I didn’t intend much beyond doing a bit of writing. I’ve done that, and it went somewhere, and I like that. I like the journey. I like the path. It’s a nice feeling, knowing that things are coming to a close, I suppose. And it’s sad, but it’s mine and it’s for me to follow.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 14:45:05

A bit more serous than I would have liked.

Written at Dirty Red.