I used to go to Bob’s Big Boy restaurant just about every day from the mid-seventies until the early eighties. I’d have a milk shake and sit and think. There’s a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milk shake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.—David Lynch, Catching The Big Fish
What is a vacation and why do we go on one?
Last week I was sitting by myself in an IHOP in Cambridge, MA, eating a $5 breakfast special. Here I was, on vacation in a great big city, on a beautiful college campus, with tons of exotic sights to see…and all I wanted to do was sit in this mundane little restaurant and drink coffee and think and doodle in my sketchbook.
Idling without guilt.
It was delicious.
In the early 1890s, GK Chesterton wrote that there were 3 types of leisure:
The first is being allowed to do something. The second is being allowed to do anything. And the third (and perhaps most rare and precious) is being allowed to do nothing.
This weekend, I encourage you to not feel pressured to fill your holiday with activities. Go someplace mundane where the coffee flows and let your mind wander. Savor it.
Great stuff, Austin. Thanks for sharing.
Tom
Aww.. too bad you didn’t try Tealuxe up the street from that IHOP. It’s much more soothing; also Noir across the street is a great place to do nothing with a drink in hand and some very quiet music in the background. This last weekend was an awesome time to do nothing, especially in Cambridge.
I dunno, man: IHOP was pretty damned soothing. And cheap, too.
I think you’re on the right track at IHOP. I can’t seem to settle down in nice/unique/hole-in-the-wall places. Maybe because the tables are so damn small? Nothing like a nice booth to spread out in.
One of my best Appalachian Trail memories came off-trail near Carlisle, PA… called it an early day… spent a few hours sitting and journaling in the Middlesex Diner with the “Chicken Fiesta Grilled Wrap,” big plate of fries, slaw, two orders of pancakes, bacon, untold gallons of soda… [wistful sigh]
Yeah, I mean, I love supporting small hole-in-the-wall, local joints, but when it comes to being left alone and spreading out, sometimes the chains do best.