Being married, I haven't had the opportunity to sit alone and have lunch all that much. It's always expected of me to go with the wife, you know, out of common courtesy and all that. I love going out with my wife. We love each other and she's just a pleasant human being to have lunch with. But lately I haven't had the time to dine alone and I forgot how much I enjoy it.
There have been periods of my life which I was utterly alone, and being alone for most of the time makes you not appreciate the times when it's just delightful. When you live alone, go to the movies alone, drive to work alone, have no one to talk to and eat alone, it's not that special. Yes, of course there are friends - I don't mean to say that I wasn't surrounded by friends and family when I wanted, but I didn't notice how swell loneliness can be when I was utterly consumed by it.
What struck me today was, for the first time in a while, I heard people as an orchestra surrounding me, and I haven't heard that in a long time.
Let me explain.
When I first started going out, drinking and, naturally, smoking a bit of weed, I would just sit on a leather couch on the second floor of Space 26 (Utica's most non-'Utica' bar and because of that, Utica's most 'Utica' bar too) and listen to the crowd. Above the dance music the conversations of a room of 50 sounded like a song of its own. The women pitched low and high with whatever story they felt compelled to shout to one another blended with the men loudly requesting another drink from the bartender, all with greetings and introductions of friends to make one seemingly endless verse with no chorus.
It wasn't exactly something you could tap your toes to, but all this nonsense was certainly something that passed the time. And it only worked when I didn't focus in on any words in particular. If I recognized or heard one sentence or conversation above the others, it just didn't sound right. This wasn't a concerto; it was a symphony.
Anyway, this was something I would do when I just wanted to be away from all the stories I'd heard ten times before or avoiding that person from High School who's name I forgot. It was something that was mine that I could half-drunkenly stumble to and smirk about alone on the couch. I explained this to one of my friends once and after she laughed at me, I saw in her eyes that she recognized what I had heard. I think people always assumed I was depressed up there, but in actuality I was happier than I was at most times. It was a discovery of mine, but like most discoveries of the 21st Century, it's probably already been discovered a number of times.
I never forgot about this real-life orchestra, but it moved behind all the other stuff I've concerned myself with throughout the years.
Today, I heard it again while I was enjoying a book at Nola's. At first it was the usual eavesdropping of inane conversations, like "You just wouldn't believe what my Shawn can do now..." and "It's pretty cold out, huh?..." and so on. When I got into my book, the words around me blended together and I heard the unintended music.
Well, I have to get to work.
I would not have published this blog, but perhaps your standards aren't quite as high as mine. And I told myself that this year I would post more often, because I won't improve my writing unless I actually write something that's not an e-mail.
Was there more to this story? Did I leave any loose ends?
It doesn't matter. What matters is I posted, and I feel damn good about it.
And yeah, I admit to smoking weed for a period of time in my life. I can talk about it now though, because I can pass a drug test, and because smoking weed now just gives me the inspiration to clean my apartment to the point where I'm not stoned any more. And that's not very fun so I stopped.
I usually try to wrap up these posts with something that brings in the story full-circle. Guess that's not going to happen. I'm really out of practice.
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