Age and Sitting

This morning’s descent from hilltop home to riverside office included some familiar sightings which, in their turn, yielded less familiar reflections. I am very used to seeing the old man reading out in front of the Cafe on my way to work. He is there every single day of the summer, in rain, clouds, scorching heat and especially the bright autumn sunshine and cool-sunkissed air that ventured with me this morning. He’s always there, reading, facing outward, toward the street, not inward toward the cafe walls. His head is held high, too, like he’s absolutely willing to exit or pause his deep imaginings for the sake of anyone willing to stop and chat. Almost like he is reading, but peering out of the corners of his consciousness at the same time. People have seemed to catch on to this fixture and in my most recent bun-runs and drive-bys, he has been engaged in conversation with everyone from spandex cyclists to entire families. 

My second sighting was the familiar boat-club and marina at the bottom of our hill. I’m not one with an “eye” for boats, nor do I know what makes one more special than another, but every few weeks they will trade out their roadside “display” to something new, and it always sparks my curiosity and wonder to see a boat outside of the water. My, how big they are when you see them on land, so much is usually below the surface hiding the subject of the vast majority of engineering and design that makes one boat so different from another. The hull is what defines a boat, but most often you have to take the salesman’s word for it, or be willing to don a snorkel or scuba gear to see for yourself. It must take a lot of faith to buy a boat, I don’t think I have it. I would want to know what’s down there, below the surface. 

But this morning the boats were all gone, replaced with a loan spectre, sitting on one of those push and sit walker-assist type devices. The clinical practicum of that shape is seared into my brain from so many aunts and grandparents who have used them and since passed onward. I assume it was a man, not a woman, sitting there, from his posture and the shape of his shoulders, the high angular peak of his baseball cap which my imagination configured to say “Vietnam Veteran” on the front. In the handful of seconds it took to onboard this impression followed by the five minutes it took to get to the office, I was overcome by a desire to know his story. Who was he, why was he there, what a beautiful choice of location, did he love boats, did he walk that walker all the way down one of the three steep hills leading to the marina? How?

Yesterday I spent an hour talking with a woman, sitting by a tall window in her art studio, overlooking our river. She’s in her late seventies, and she told me stories of her father’s menagerie as a veterinarian, and the chimpanzee that sat at their dinner table. At one point they had two lions and eight aardvarks living in their basement. Her father was a veterinarian in the 1950s and the zoo would send him sick animals to mend. I followed that conversation with another friend who is in his sixties, sitting, telling me of his aging father who has parkinsons and is slowly, slowly, slowly beginning his transition into eternity. They smile at him, they wipe the food that dribbles from his chin, they grieve him and hug him daily. Sharing meals, sharing stories. 

Pause.
Consider. 
Breathe. 

My friend the artist has said that “it is enough, sometimes, just to acknowledge and to honor someone. My work doesn’t require you to do anything, or give money or take action. Rather, it is just a chance to focus your attention on those people and their story, to give honor to other humans in this world who may need nothing more than acknowledgement.” And so that’s what this is. An observation. A response to the sitting and pondering people I’ve witnessed in the last 48 hours by sitting, myself, and pondering what it is that is so important about what each of these people have chosen to do with their time. They are spending precious moments at the end of life engaged in what most of us capitalists consider to be a waste of time. Reading daily by the cafe, sitting watching the boats, making art, wiping dribble are all such benign actions, but also so completely noticeable. The space created by these pastimes is resounding and vacuous and to me, on this cool-shine day of late August, it is clear, just for a brief moment, that at the end of our very short days, the thing that we just might consider to be the most important way to pass our ever-decreasing and therefore infinitely more precious moments is to just sit and ponder, and let others pass by and wonder at it. 

Breathe. Pause. Consider. Breathe.

___

These journal entries are just that, journal entries, shared from the heart to the heart. They are not meant to cause clutter, but rather space to your inbox. If they don’t do this, delete them. If they do, then my greatest wish is they cause you to pause, breathe and consider in some meaningful moments of your day. They will not come in any specific order or timing, but rather as the insights and reflections choose to bloom. Thank you for sharing this moment with me. 

Authentically, 

Ben