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"Hey, my friend, it's been a while. Mind if I sit here," he said as his butt touched down on the other, unproffered, light oak chair at my glass-topped table and he laid out his pumpkin scone and cinnamon latte. "Like two years?"
"Could be." I half-closed Pale Fire, keeping my place with my finger.
"So what have you been doing since you retired? Still playing ball?"
"Trying to."
"Yeah, I don't have the energy for that. I--geez, look at that guy over there. Another cell phone blabber who can't stand to be alone. Sharing all his boring or way too personal information with the coffee-drinking public. And always at high volume. Why do people talk so much louder on the phone than face-to-face? Do they think they have to throw their voice all the way to the cell towers? What's he talking about? His operation? His prostate? Can you believe it? Who wants to know? Yeah, yeah, it affected his love life and his attitude toward work, blah, blah. Next he'll go on about what he had for breakfast and how his battery was dead and he had to get a ride to work and his boss chewed him out for being late. And there's a woman by herself over there, yakking away, removing her earring and putting it on the table, settling in for a long session. Wouldn't you know it--she's about to start gabbing about feelings and relationships. Why can't people just sit alone, relax, and enjoy their treat, do a little contemplating or just watch the world go by?"
"I'm wondering that myself." I replaced my finger with a bookmark and tamped down the Fire.
"That's my philosophy now. Had a scare about two months ago. Shortness of breath, chest pain. My cardiologist gave me an angiogram and ended up putting stents into two clogged arteries. So now I take time to smell the roses and gather me rosebuds while I may, relishing their scent every day."
"So you had an epiphany? The old wake-up call? I'm wondering, do you find that you can live in the moment, be fully conscious and sentient and appreciative, without being aware that that is what you're doing, without experiencing something bittersweet, possibly even tragic, not that either of us is sufficiently noble or sufficiently flawed for tragedy, a sense of finitude and impending loss? And does that augmented emotion then enrich you and heighten your pleasure or suck it away from you? Doesn't conscious enjoyment inevitably lead to pain? Wouldn't you have to be like a dog sniffing a hydrant, gnawing a bone, or chasing a car--totally absorbed with no extraneous thoughts--in order to experience pure enjoyment unalloyed with wistfulness or regret? Don't you find that the happier you are, the more melancholy you become?"
"Nah, not me. It's not that complicated. When I'm happy, I'm happy. When I'm sad, I'm sad. Like I said, I've got a new lease on life. Hey, nice catching up with you but isn't that old Jim Anderson taking the corner table by that woman who's still on her cell? You mind if I move over and sit with him for a few? There's something I need to talk to him about."
"Not at all. Enjoy your moment."
"You, too, if you can."
"I'll just sit here in front of the Fire, think about Shade, and toy with an idea you just gave me for a poem."
Yes, I see you,
ex-colleague,
cup and plate in hands.
Please don't drop into
your sitting motion even
as you say
"May I?"
Pass on by
and let me read.
Delight not that
you happened upon me
and can now trade
who nows what thens
where whens how muches
why sos instead of
smiling a lonely
apology to the room
and hyper-savoring
your latte and scone.
Go away, damn it.
I have my book,
Nabokov's voice-over
resonating above
clatter and chatter
and mumbling hum,
clearly ambiguous
words interanimating,
all the more exciting
for being drunk in
with house blend
at this still table
in the center
of the din.
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