The Town Diary

I slipped through the glass door that separated the ice caked pavement from the warm, steamy interior of my favorite coffee shop. The spacious floor and mouthwatering aroma of coffee and freshly baked pastries provided a colorful change of pace from my cramped, musty apartment. Already, I felt better situated for the work ahead.

My eyes roamed over the dining area. Half the tables were open, but each of them had at least one neighbor. I don’t like to think of myself as unsociable, but I couldn’t tolerate the performance pressure of a stranger’s shadow hanging over me. As I began thinking I might have to climb back up the hill to find a different coffee shop, I found what I was looking for: three empty tables in the corner, forming a right angle. If I took the center one, it would leave me comfortably insulated from the rest of the room.

It wasn’t until I was seated that I saw it, a nondescript, tired looking notebook on the table in front of mine. As much as I tried to keep my attention on my paper, my eyes kept checking over the rim of my laptop to see if anyone had retrieved it. Having such a personal item so near was like seeing the ghostly outline of the table’s former occupant. In a way, it was more distracting than if somebody had been sitting there.

I took the journal up to the bar and waved at the barista. She bounced over as soon as she had completed taking down her latest customer’s order. I proffered her the little black booklet.

“Excuse me, miss, but I found this over on that table. I think someone must have left it there.”

“Oh!” the girl said. “That’s a town diary!”

“Town diary?

“It’s a collaborative project between the Humanities and Sociology Department. They leave them around town. If you find it, you are supposed to fill in a page and leave it in a public space for the next person to find. Look inside the jacket.”

I did. Sure enough, behind the cover, I found instructions explaining the journal’s purpose just as the girl described it, with an added incitement.

Our community has gotten to the point where the people around us might as well be paintings on the wall. Get to know your town, and let them get to know you!

I glanced back at the people seated behind me. “’Paintings’ on the wall is pretty generous,” I said. “Wallpaper, is more like it.”

The girl’s expression creased with sadness. “I know right?” Her bubbliness couldn’t be repressed for long, and enthusiasm returned. “Anyway, it’s a cool project, a way of telling the whole town’s story and helping everyone feel closer. You should read a couple entries, they’re pretty interesting! Maybe leave one yourself, if you have time!”

Like most people, I’d filled my home with things that entertain me. The reason I had endured the winter afternoon was to escape distractions and finish reviewing the figures for my firm’s latest account, the biggest we had ever landed in the state. After getting a coffee, I began leafing through its’ pages.

I can’t remember most of the entries now. The writers didn’t leave a deep impression on me or promote themselves above ‘wallpaper’ status. One has stayed with me, partly because it included a big number and my mind bends more to the mathematical than the literary, but more because it was so antithetical to my own attitudes. It was dated a couple weeks previously, written by a ‘Steve’, a minimalistic name I wasn’t sure paired well with the person it belonged to.

Uncle Trent was never good with money. He always said his last nickel would roll out after him when they carried away the casket. When we settled his estate, my share of amounted to $20,000. Guess he was a little better than his word.

I’ve spent the past month going on the mother of all spending sprees. Sort of ‘scattering the ashes in the urn’ so to speak. I know my uncle would be proud of me for blowing it on anything that isn’t intelligent or responsible, so it feels like a good way to honor him. I knew the ‘rents will never buy it, but everyone’s got to deal with grief in their own way, right?

The next paragraph was a shopping list of the many expensive things Steve had acquired. Music featured prominently, as he blew through almost five thousand dollars of his uncle’s bequest assembling an audio and sound system capable of both playing vinyl, CDs, and cassettes. That, in an era defined by MP3s and simple handheld devices.

Our hero wasn’t near finished, however. Not until he’d filled a whole closet with the latest, trendiest clothes, procured a used Honda, and had more than a couple nights ‘out on the town’.

Want to feel like you are on top of the world? Don’t climb a mountain, wait until a bar is full and buy a pitcher of drinks for every table in the place!

The Honda, Steve admitted, was a last minute effort to mollify his parents by showing he could buy items with practicality utility too.

To top it all, I got my first car! Uncle Trent wouldn’t be so excited about this one because it’s a Japanese economy car, not something you’d see on the autobahn. Still, not even Mom and Dad could argue with the price point when they heard about it. Now they won’t need to drive me back and forth when I visit home.

Unfortunately for Steve, this bit of misdirection failed to placate them once the full extent of his retail therapy became known.

Well, I had fun, but you know what they say about all good things, right? The money is gone, and my parents stopped by for a surprise visit while I was out and saw the rest of my new shit. Not that I could have hidden it. Naturally, their heads exploded and they drove home after basically disowning me. I tried explaining I’d made a lot of people pretty happy, that I didn’t spend it all on myself, but there was no talking to them. I don’t why it should matter. I’ll have my whole life to make money, and I’m going to have all this stuff at the end, anyway. What’s it matter if I get it now and hoard cash later?

Steve’s story got stuck in my head like an earworm, and try as I might, I couldn’t shake it without formulating a response. I took a pen and began to write.

I’m a financial advisor and work remotely. My firm has landed a new account recently, the biggest in our branch’s history, and it’s my job to review the invoices to make sure everything will be reported to the client’s satisfaction.

I’ve acquired a bit of a fortune of my own helping to manage others’, but nonetheless manage to live frugally. Relatives and acquaintances of mine urge me to live for experiences and not for money, especially since I haven’t acquired any dependents and am unlikely to do so.

I’d argue that I have listened to their advice, in my own way. Money has helped me more in not spending it than any spending it. Developing the inner ability to say ‘no’ to consumerist impulses is the most useful and valuable ability one can have, as the world and its problems become easily manageable when you have cultivated a will that can have anything and yet want nothing.

I spent the next couple of minutes agonizing over what I had written. It was less journaling and more philosophic posturing. I wasn’t sure it strictly met the guidelines of the project. I had written it in pen, however, and could not erase it without destroying the journal, a feat I was unwilling to perform despite my contempt for its contents, both mine, Steve’s, and everyone else’s. I’m sure it was the best contribution to the pursuit of knowledge any of us could make, and if nothing else, I hoped future readers would find a hundred pages illustrating how *not* to approach their day.

It had become evident I wouldn’t be able to concentrate while I was here, and that I would need to improvise a new office space from one of the nearby venues. After returning the journal to the table where I’d found it, I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and headed for the exit, stopping momentarily to drop off my now empty coffee cup.

The barista received it with a smile.

“I saw you over there, scribbling away,” she said. “Do you feel any closer to the community?”

Not really, I thought. Truth was, I felt more isolated and disconnected than ever.

“Yes,” I said, looking over the shop one more time. “Really helps you put a soul to those faces in the background.”