Get out of town more! It's good for you

On the way out of town, I got to meet this little lady in Port Lavaca down the main street. Everything was shuttered, and cars drove through, but no one stopped for anything. She waved me over from her rocking chair, and I must've looked like I had come a long way. She palmed a pack of Lucky Strikes, which I never knew where to find. It's strange, but I always felt weird smoking around someone much older than me. There was a sense of guilt; I felt like a child about to be scolded for lying. She must've been anywhere between 82 and 93, and I felt some reassurance in that too, like maybe I should pick up another bad habit or two if you lived that long off of Lucky Strikes, I need to hurry up and get on with it. She was looking at this building across the street, and the second floor had caved through to the first and spilled into the street below, the kitchen sink and al,l laid out, and the birds were building nests in the rafters. "It was some apartments or a doctor's office, or maybe a bar and a doctor's office." It didn't matter anymore, but we had some fun in assuming. She wasn't from her, and she kinda laughed in a way each time she said it to make sure I was paying attention. She said her home was in Canada, and this was just the place she moved for her husband, but her husband wasn't around anymore, as far as I could tell. Even though I didn't wanna pry, I could tell that much. Sticking around somewhere out of respect for the memory of someone, I've never experienced that, and I don't really know if I want to. Like you see these old couples, and if some upstairs neighbor is pulling the strings, you hope they're kind enough to take them both at the same time, but it never happens that way.

One always goes before the other, and then in a moment's notice, the person you've spent the better half (hopefully better) part of your life getting to know is gone, and you're just supposed to keep on keeping on? I don't know if I'm strong enough to do that. I can barely manage now, never mind knowing someone longer than three months. But she just sat in her rocking chair, coffee and cigarettes and some more and some more, and I don't know, maybe suffering that kind of loss fixes some kind of primal instinct inside your brain. Like it hollows you out and there's some peace in that, you don't have to deal with this back and forth unsureness anymore, you did it and that's that. You don't have a whole lot of energy to waste anymore, so you have to be really careful where you plant yourself and who you gesture to, and there's peace in that, too. She said she would've liked to see what this town looked like back in its glory days, and I agreed

I think I'm afraid of outliving my usefulness. of reaching an age where there's nothing more to do, no more places to go, no more people to meet, no kids or grandkids visiting me, so I just go to the same old coffee shop and drink my coffee and smoke and repeat and spend the whole day reminiscing, just spend the whole day walking around inside my head. I think that's where hate comes from, grief is just love with nowhere to go, and bigotry is fear that you're being forgotten, but you don't know how to be vulnerable, so that fear comes out as hate. That fear that you've been outpaced and despite how hard you try, you can't stick around forever, and eventually you've gotta give your life over to someone else. That's all we're ever doing really just starting over. I think some of our politicians would learn a lot from visiting this lady, and even though she didn't talk a whole lot, I sure learned some things. I think every time I go on one of these trips, I do a little bit more self-reflection, and I learn a little bit more about how to treat people.

I read this Hemingway short story recently called "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and it's stuck itself inside me for a little bit. The story goes that there are these two waiters, an older and a younger man, and they work at a café, and it's closing time, but there's an old man who refuses to leave, and over the course of the night, they become less and less sympathetic to him. The older and younger waiter go back and forth between letting him stay,

"Why didn't you let him stay and drink?" the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. "It is not half-past two."

"I want to go home to bed."

"What is an hour?"

"More to me than to him."

"An hour is the same."

"You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home."

"It's not the same."

"No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.

"And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?"

"Are you trying to insult me?"

"No, hombre, only to make a joke."

"No," the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. "I have confidence. I am all confidence."

"You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said. "You have everything."

"And what do you lack?"

"Everything but work."

"You have everything I have."

I think about this old woman in her rocking chair and the broken-down building, which no one but her cares about what it used to be, and I think about these old men I see at the coffee shops and the bar who come out every day, who sit and wait. Sometimes I feel like I'm much older than I am because all I wanna do sometimes is sit and wait. The old man in the story waited around all day just to avoid going home because nothing was waiting for him at home, but he had nothing else left to do, so he sought out the comfort of a well-lighted place.