Polyphonic

man you gotta keep your eyes open.  perspective and experience is just everywhere for the taking.  we get in our little tunnels and bubbles and try to tune everything else out b/c we are self-centered and self-oriented but we are doing ourselves a disservice and missing opps right and left

dreary sunday. i took the girls down to vint in the afternoon just to get them out of the house and prevent them from sitting in the bedroom poking around on their phones all day

so vint was a bit crowded but we sat near the fireplace, their were two open chairs and a seat open on the sofa.  the other seat on the sofa was occupied by an old man with sunglasses on.  i didn’t think anything about him one way or another; he was just taking up space; all he meant to me was that i couldn’t sit closer to the fireplace

so the girls and i continued our conversation about the speed of light, the distance of the sun to the earth, how big the galaxy is, how long it would take to get to the nearest star, how likely it is that there is life in other solar systems but it’s too far away so we’ll probably never know etc. etc.

the old man sitting next to me chimed in.  oh you’re helping them study, or get ready for a test or something.  no, i said, we’re just talking.  trying not to be too polite or inviting and send the wrong message that i welcomed his inclusion into our conversation.  trying to ride the line between being polite and letting him know non-verbally that i was trying to spend time with the girls and wasn’t looking for additional participants in the conversation.

so i answered his question and returned to my conversation with the girls, which they were only indulging me anyway and would rather have been poking on their phones, and he persisted.  this is the only place i can think of where you can come and sit down next to a fire, you know, a bar or restaurant.  can you think of any others?

i couldn’t

kevin was telling me that on wednesday nights this turns into quite a different place.  they sell wine and beer, and apparently it’s a fun place to be.  i don’t think i would come up here then.  a little glass of wine with about that much wine in it costs $8.50.  and it’s not even very good wine.

ok.

our perceptions of others are fluid, at least as they are forming, in the initial stages.  we get more and more information out of each exchange, until we arrive at an idea of who this is we’re talking to.  at first i thought he was just an older guy who was chillin on a sunday afternoon, probably with a wife and grandkids, and a home, and he’s retired, and he’s just chillin.  by now i thought, he’s a lonely old dude and i could start to smell his desperation.

so i gave up on my conversation with the girls, let them get back to their phones, and talked to the old guy for about five minutes.  he just had eye surgery.  he had been blind in his right eye for some time, which wasn’t so bad b/c he always had his left eye and could see well enough. but now since he had surgery on his left eye, he woke up also blind in that eye from the surgery, and they should have told him that would happen b/c he was panicked when he woke up and was totally blind.  i can imagine.  but it would be getting better over the next few days, weeks. luckily it was just the cornea and not a total something or other type operation, because with that operation, you’re blind in that eye for like eight months while it’s healing and he wouldn’t be able to deal with that.

i thought of him waking up from surgery and realizing he couldn’t see at all, that he was already blind in what would have been his spare eye, the obvious and inevitable panic that would ensue, and not having anyone to empathize with him or just be with him in that moment, not having anyone even to tell about it, to talk about it, except for this guy who happened to be sitting next to him at the coffee shop on a dreary sunday afternoon three days later.

usually when you talk to strangers and they’re just making small talk you sense that there is another agenda, they’re working up to asking for money, and they think that if they can talk to you for two minutes before asking, that then you have some sort of relationship or friendship and it will be harder to say no.  so i was waiting for that, and it came when he said, which way are you going, could i get a ride with you, i just live down the street and it would be so much easier than trying to catch the bus in the rain and i can’t see and all that

so here i was with two teenage girls and i didn’t know if this guy was crazy and what could happen if i put him in the car with us, so i thought, i’ll leave them here, run him down the street, then come back and get them.  that way, if he does something to just me, i can take him, but wanted to eliminate the possibility of anything happening with the girls in the car.

so i let the girls know what was up, they were fine to hang there, i pulled the car around and he got in.  then the desperation started to just rush out of him.

no wife, no kids, lives alone in a crappy apartment, been divorced since 1978, had one daughter from the war but she doesn’t know him at all and has had no relationship with him ever, some things are better left alone, etc. etc.  right now his biggest concern was how he was going to get back to his followup doctor appointment next wednesday b/c he doesn’t have a car and can’t drive and has no one to take him.  he could take a cab of course but that’s so goddam expensive.  he was born in cleveland and moved to the country when he was six weeks old and lived on his uncle’s farm with his parents, his father worked the farm for his uncle b/c his uncle was old, his father was killed while he was holding him (i didn’t ask how), his mother re-married and was abused by her new husband.  two tours of duty in korea.  oh.

so this man was a veteran of active duty, twice, and now he’s got fuck all and nobody gives a shit.

we pulled up to his shitty little apartment building and we got out of the car.  he kept talking.  we keep sending these boys to afghanistan over and over, and they either get so fucked in the head from the experience that they can’t live back in the real world or they get killed over there.  and do you know what they’re doing over there?  they’re guarding the poppy fields.  that’s how we finance the war.  and then those drugs come back to this country and fuck up the kids here.

but there are some good people in the world.  there are a lot of rotten people who do terrible things, but there are some good people too, and you’re one of them, he starts to shake my hand.  it’ll come back to you.  you never know how but it will, you can be sure of that.

he hopes to see me again down at the coffee shop, he’s there all the time, and if he doesn’t recognize me because he can’t see very well, i should come up and say hello.

wonder if i will see him again.  wonder if i do, will i say hello.

then he shuffled off toward his apartment and i drove away.  how many millions of georges are there.  it’s crushing to contemplate.