Me and Chekhov went to the coffee shop one morning

What does it mean that the gradual arrival each morning of the old men with their bags, to sit outside or sometimes to shuffle in for a cup of coffee nursed long beyond its usual life, has become normal? Where do they sleep at night, those aging bodies with the aches and pains that no one avoids? I caught myself this morning, sitting in the table at the window, seeing out of the corner of my eye one of the regulars pulling up his old duffel on wheels, with a strap around to hold it in place. I realized that this seems ordinary now.

I looked around the people sitting inside at the tables: gregarious, self-deprecating, bigoted gray-haired Richard, who likes to assemble a knot of men around him to pass the time for a while before heading out to do work that is much too physically demanding. With him often is a local attorney about his age, and various others, most often men, befriended by Richard who will talk to anyone whose glance passes his way. I’m a problem, because I’m much too liberal and outspoken, but he tolerates me graciously. I take care to greet him without stopping, because after a minute there is not much to be said between us.

There’s a man with a pony tail of an uncertain age-he used to come in every day with a tidy but large backpack, but of late he comes without luggage- he seems to have found a place to live. This I think is true not only from the absence of the pack, but his demeanor has shifted from a pinch of obsequiousness to a quietude and self-containment that speak of a sense of security in his person.

The old man with white hair who is discomfited by any interaction usually comes a little later. One time, a year or so ago, I forgot my laptop in the coffee shop, and he took the trouble to rescue it for me. He accepted my gratitude with embarrassment, and almost never acknowledges my hello, but still I remember his kindness, and feel some sort of communal bond that he would shudder at if he knew.

Lately, when I sit in my favored spot at the window, which faces toward another table on the other side of the door, I look up and there is a woman with a hard stare, seeming to feel some animosity toward me. At first I stared back, to break her stare, but now I just leave her be. Whatever the reason for her steely gaze, I doubt that I am any part of it.

I recognize in the manager the striving too hard to be genial and likeable, because I felt it in myself at her age. It seems to take women a while to give themselves permission to be who they are, by which time their youth and the beauty of youth are somewhat diminished. This I know to be common, but no one can learn it until they can. What a waste of time.

We all show up each day to our own lives, striving for something we rarely understand, and yet we continue day after day. We bring our bags of remembered loss and diminution, the glow of happy memories, the ache in our hearts for what we realize we will never have, and we wear about us our armor of certainty, or lacking that, a shield to stop the world from seeing inside. And we drink coffee together and alone.

The soundtrack of our lives

The crackle of fire, when someone lifts the tab on a soda or beer can, the ping of the email notification - each part of the auditory cues, comforts and warnings that help to direct our days on this planet.

I think the sound of knitting needles clicking will always bring my mother to mind, even long after she no longer inhabits the space I call "Mom."

Recently someone brought up the Doppler effect- the difference in sound of something as it approaches and as it moves away from a person. To this I would add the difference in the sound of a door latch when it's being opened and when it's being closed. Sometimes, though, it's hard to know the difference. Is this the end or is it the beginning?

The husks that protect and muffle

As I was walking home from work on this dark and rainy evening, it occurred to me that I am changing.  The change is so gradual as to be unnoticeable at close range, but of late I've noticed some odd things about myself.  Seeing walnuts lying under trees with their hard outer green husks being gradually softened by the weather prompted this line of thought.

Like them, I carry on, assuming that I will continue on as I am.  Ok, I can't really say that walnuts assume anything.  However, I think I can say that they are passive in this process, being acted upon, rather than proactively changing, which is not the point I was making at all. I may be taking this analogy thing too far.  The point now being lost, here's my point.

I am not who I was just a short time ago.  I am more distilled, less covers the distance between my inner self and the outer world.  This shows up in various ways.  I am more accepting of some things, yet more hostile and unbending as to others. In both cases, I feel I am closer to the truth of who I am. Hence the walnut husk comparison.

A vagabond I shall be

"A vagabond then is primarily a man who travels without any definite utilitarian aim.  He does not go abroad expecting to bring about the millennium by impressing upon the world his own opinions and prejudices, neither does he ramble from Country to Country collecting statistics and accumulating information as a pure matter of mental discipline.  He is content to be a simple observer in the great world of God- studying those things which interest him for no other reason than because they do interest him . . . [A] vagabond seeks to know the world and its people as they are, and in order to acquire that knowledge he is ready to become all things with all men and to make himself equally at home in all places.  In this sense of the word I do not hesitate to avow myself a vagabond of the most pronounced type."  George Kennan

There's a word for people who just travel for the sake of the experience, of seeing what's there.  We look askance at them, wondering aloud how they plan to fund their retirement, or when they will 'grow up'. I guess the trick is to find someone who will pay you to do it.  Or failing that, maybe win the lottery.

Excuse me while I go buy my lottery ticket.

The horizon beckons, and chopsticks await

" . . . my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die."

from Ulysses by Alfred Lloyd Tennyson

"Death closes all" indeed. But before those doors are slammed and locked there are some things I hope to do. Ok, really there are many things on that list. I fear more than anything a gradual slide into mindless daily routines, the failure to learn something new, to attempt something difficult.

I want to learn another language, travel to places that discomfit me and jar me out of complacency, I want to be inspired, challenged, and I want to make something that will last beyond my short time as a citizen of this world. Oh, and I really want to gain proficiency with chopsticks.

I want time spent with others such that I leave the exchange affected by it, and I desire solitude of some amount on a regular basis. I want to find something good to watch on Netflix once in a while, and I hope to discipline myself to accomplish more in the next ten years than I have in the past fifty.

Contentment, where art thou?

I wonder if contentment is destined to elude me, other than fleeting little wisps of it on a warm sunny afternoon. The greener side of the fence calls persistently, and I'm continually distracted from the thing in hand by what's not.

Is this genetic, or a general human condition? Over the course of my life, I've encountered others who genuinely seem satisfied with whatever lot they've been given. Sometimes I'd tilt my head and purse my lips as I looked at them eyeball to eyeball, in a concentrated attempt to see inside their heads, to see if their professed acceptance of the status quo was genuine. It's not that they were sated, but that they sought no such thing.  Or so it appeared to me. But who can really know the mind of another?

Instead I sit here looking over the fence, chewing thoughtfully on the blade of grass in my teeth and pondering what it is to be other than I am.

Exactitude and the parts of an elephant

I have a fondness for precise usage of words to communicate exactly what I wish to express, and as a tool in understanding the meaning of what others are saying.

This morning as I left my driveway, I heard on the radio the forecast for today, "Highs in the mid-60's to mid-80's," apparently hedging their bets. Having lived here for a number of years, I know that in reality, the range of highs varies that much within the radio station's listening area due to coastal and other influences. But there's no room in a sound bite for such detail, and so the range-one must have an understanding of where their location fits in the range to have an idea of how warm it might get come mid-afternoon. If I relied on the radio for weather forecasts, I might be frustrated by the inexact nature of their information.

My focus on precision is useful to describe things like my visceral response to certain behaviors, or the nuances present in an unconventional relationship. Or the look on the face of the man sitting on the bench with all his worldly possessions gathered close, or the openness and pure delight of a young child's face whose life view has not yet been tempered by the realities of human behavior.  Would that I could describe such things with clarity and exactly the right words to shade the verbal picture with meaning that arrests the listener.

Alas, I cannot.  And even if I could, it turns out that there is no exact calibration tool to assess what meaning each of us assigns to a given word, even from within the same cultural and socioeconomic setting. We must rely on imprecise tools such as synonyms, and while we can get close to certainty, we can never arrive.

That inability to know with certainty that we both mean the same thing when we agree on the use of a word may in part be the source of misunderstandings, but I believe that it's also an essential element of the diversity that creates beauty and the resulting opportunity for discovery.  Like the blind men who each felt a different part of the elephant, we all understand what we understand.  It's in the telling, and listening, that we find there are more parts to the elephant than we knew.  This awareness of our ignorance is the only avenue to expanding our elephant knowledge. We will never know all the aspects of the elephant, but we do better if we try.