Direction-of-the-pharmacy from my apartment has slim options for cafes within easy walking distance. There’s Starbucks and McDonald’s, and the latter has cheaper coffee and still has WiFi, and despite the signs everywhere declaring that staying longer than 30 minutes is loitering and that the manager must enforce this restriction, nobody’s ever bugged me. This has held across locations; I frequently work in schools where your nearby options for coffee are the convenience store or a fast food joint, and I often drive out a couple hours early to avoid the worst of traffic.
There’s an old folks meeting at the table next to me, I assume of a neighborly and regular nature. Older folks trickle in and sit at the same table* to kvetch. At one point old man says clearly: “It doesn’t get better as you get older.” Talk of some kind of test result. I glance over and the two old men that were at the table at that point are staring into the middle distance, down, way-it-goes kind of resignation. So I just sit “with” them, and listen, and think. I too have this nature; I too will grow old: this is inescapable. They too were once young, once felt a vague sense of distance and dread around the ailments of old age. I send them wishes of loving-kindness and peace. And I think.
Kind of, you know, whatever.
I’m reading Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe bildungsroman** and the titular character has a massive hate-on, specifically, explicitly, for Brahms, and as I can’t recall any works offhand I’m listening to Brahms right now and… I don’t know, doesn’t seem that bad. Kind of flat and insipid but fine enough. Then again I am not exactly a musical prodigy (Christophe, the character) or a musical critic (Rolland himself).
Addendum: WOULD YOU FUCK OFF??
WOULD YOU PLEASE. FUCK RIGHT THE FUCK OFF.
*The first old guy to get there comes by my table and says “Just so you know, we were going to sit there, but that’s okay.” And I offer to move (it *is* a larger table but as place was empty-ish I felt fine taking it for myself) but he just throws up his hands and says, “No, no; I’m just sayin…” and walks away. I don’t respond to vague innuendo mind games so I stayed put. Look, I offered.
**Well, where I am in the story thus far he’s only a young man, so thus far the story has been this.
