A Wise Man Once Said

The man asked to sit down at my table while he waited for a friend. I said yes. 

He wasn’t the usual Santa Claus type - they tend to be more promising. He was a wiry old man, with a large backpack and open toed sandals and a twitch in his eye, but I’m open minded.

He said he noticed me because I was reading, and proceeded to tell me about how technology is stealing our capacity to think and pay attention. 

He said he didn’t believe in coincidental meetings, and gave me his business card, a little laminated square with his name that wasn’t in comic sans but almost. Mando*, artist. 

I sensed I was on the cusp of something. Or maybe it was the second beer. 

When his friend arrived, he sat down with us. The friend wore a white fedora with sunglasses nested in the front, and a black satin shirt with little Buddhas printed on it. I pretended to read as they spoke to each other in a confusing mix of Italian and Spanish. Mando talked about his projects, and I realized he was pitching for them to work together. 

My presence at the table was beginning to feel inappropriate, but I stayed because, well, technically it was my table -I don’t make the rules. But more than that, there is something surreal, almost sublime, in being allowed to witness a glimpse of another life. What wisdom would I find, peeking through this window that chance had placed between the two seats before me? What insights would these older men impart? What stories would they tell, those bittersweet tales from times past that, in their wistful simplicity, somehow enclose all the beauty and suffering of the universe? 

I stayed and listened and drank my third beer. 

Suddenly Mando turned to me. He said he had been working on a big new idea, and wanted to know what I thought about it. He reached into his backpack, and placed a small book in front of me. It was a simple hardback, on the cover were the words: ‘The Book Still Unwritten’. I opened it. “No no,” he laughed. “It’s still unwritten, get it?” 

The pages were all blank, it was a notebook. 

“Ah… I get it…” I said, even though there wasn’t much to get. 

Still I stayed, waiting. It was really just a matter of time. I had to be patient, get through the preamble, wade through the muddy shallows to reach the limpid depth of their conversation. Is it selfish or overly charitable to romanticize the lives of strangers? Is it egocentric to want every coincidental interaction to become a scene I can then recount? Or is it unjustifiably generous to expect these random old men to reveal the secrets of the human experience to me? 

I longed for the disclosure of some deeper meaning so I could go home afterwards. I would go home a wise woman, and write a short yet poignant story about the lesson I had learned from this serendipitous encounter. I ordered another beer in anticipation.  

Mando had his portfolio there, printed out. He showed us his past projects. Maybe a couple were alright. 

Mando’s friend said he worked as a theater director, and stated solemnly that he only wanted easy work, after his recent past experiences. He gazed grimly at the floor for a moment. Finally we were getting somewhere. “What happened?” I asked. 

The theater director had been putting on a show when one of his pupils killed himself. The boy had been bothering some girls. So much so that four of the girls dropped out. I was not sure what exactly he meant by bothering. The boy had faced repercussions, and then he committed suicide, after which the director and theater board found out that he suffered from bipolar disorder. It was messy, and the director was done with it, he just wanted easy work now. 

“I couldn’t agree more,” Mando said. They nodded at each other, and that was it, they began talking about something else. Death was not mentioned again. 

As if early demise were only a tiresome topic that would tarnish their otherwise delightful conversation. Give them easy work, give them easy lives. Being an artist means writing it on a business card, not sitting with the anxiety of mortality, not feeling compassion for the invisible suffering of others, not untangling the sticky facts of life.  

I drank my fifth beer, but the buzz was gone, and my disappointment hung heavy. I shook both their hands, peed, paid, and left.

Maybe it’s thoughtless to search for realization in the passing words of others who are just trying to go about their day. But where else are we to look?

I had elevated these two men in my mind. After all, self proclaimed artists who do not believe in coincidences must know something I do not. 

But people are just people I guess, and most of us are not enlightened. Maybe our utter banality is the real essence of the human experience. 

I went home with a different story from the one I craved, and a different realization than I wanted. 

I definitely have an alcohol problem. Why else would I have stuck around that long?