The Roadhouse

Here is how it is easiest to concentrate: in a roomful of people talking, without music.

Starbucks & Co are no good for it.  I have more than once asked a coffee shop employee if they'd mind turning the music down.  Usually they mind, and turn it down an imperceptible eighth of a notch to appease me.  I am not appeased.

A train is perfect.  No music, people talking, plus the regular rhythm of the tracks clacking.  And trains are comfortable. 

In Talkeetna, the Roadhouse is perfect.  It's the only eatery in town that does not play music, and there's a perfect din of people talking, and there are only a few large tables instead of a bunch of small ones, so the people talking are often talking to strangers, fellow travelers, so when one phrase or sentence leaps above the din like a fish it's usually unusual.

"Why'd you move to Alaska?"
"My mom got a wild hair up her ass.  I was fourteen."

Lasagna, burnt coffee, essays by Katherine Anne Porter: perfect morning.  Morning that is not a morning because I've been awake since midnight: maybe the best mismatch of internal and external clock. 

South Carolingians on vacay

Why yes, that is the Mexican Flag

The Roadhouse was built between 1914 and 1917