The vacuity of trying to know too much

Sometimes I wonder if I've lived too long. I don't consider the thought a symptom of depression, it's just a recognition that I'm weary of the affairs of humans. Those that know me well may say having such a thought may be because I read too much, I'm a news junkie, an information hound, prone to wishing my habits were duplicated in others. Knowing of the world isn't necessarily a bad thing and, it's true, I wish more people would read, absorb the news, and pursue knowledge. "I don't have the time" is the excuse people will give at any such suggestion. It's a valid reason.

One — and for some the only — advantage of growing old is that the availability of time seems to increase. That doesn't mean it slows, in fact it speeds up if you try too diligently to measure it. Some people can't handle such an expansive new variant. A reevaluation may begin. Long-term spouses get dumped, parents tell their children what they really think of them, jobs abandoned as bosses get the middle finger, nonsensical things purchased, gender identification may shift and the pursuit of someone much younger than yourself ensues. You can appear to be ridiculous to the outside world yet strangely confident within yourself. Decorum means little. Doing what you've always wanted to do becomes the import. Maturity, self-awareness, and the responsibilities attached to it as we grow never embeds itself. The mantra of "Be Yourself" dictates the "now," a manifestation of the relentless arrogance of youth. Spousal commitments become ephemeral though leaving them sometimes painful, employment necessary only to avoid embarrassment and remain relatively independent and telling people what you think of them could be backed up by a lack of fear of a physical encounter or foresight into the future. Getting old doesn’t mean getting wiser because maturity comes. It can mean the birth of ongoing efforts to dodge the "Been there, done that" syndrome. That's kinda where I'm at as I wince at the surrounding stupidity and ponder my thought of being just energy again.

Making time to step back for a wider view is a difficult task, made more arduous by technology, an irony that escapes many people. Nothing about our electronic and increasingly complex technological devices bestows more time upon us. Finding the means to buy them, learn to operate them and using them all shrinks time down to a trickle of opportunity. Becoming a solitary person necessarily isn't an avenue of escape. Every living entity organizes in some manner. The most reclusive of creatures seek another to mate and carry on the species. Even living things that reproduce asexually tolerate the presence of others like them. Maybe that's why I went to a local bar the other night.

Being agog for discovery has always driven me to drink with company. Not one to drink just to drink, I need to conjure fantasies before I step through a barroom door — falling into an intelligent conversation, a woman giving me a chance to go home with, a pool game where I walk away with a few bucks and a bartender minus the attitude. Even as my knee gives me an ache and I mark doctor's appointments on my calendar, I think of such anticipations, letting them dance in my brain before I realize that unlike the old, one now one must compete with cellphone scrolling and rolling captions detailing sports' contests on big-screen TVs to get any attention. I suppose such obstacles to human contact can be avoided in certain dives where most everyone is out of work or dealing drugs, bumming drinks and have the option to throw up in the back alley. I've been to a few of those but prefer the next category higher, working-class bars where the variables depend upon how new your car is or whether you rent or own. Sometimes the name of the bar can signal such a distinction. Some of my frequent hangouts in years past include the Palms, Dave's Stagecoach Inn, Fric 'n Frac, Mike's and Cricket on the Hill. Stories are attached to each, some pleasurable, some a little dangerous, a few memorable to the point of being life changing. None gave me what I entirely hoped for.

This is what I thought of as I walked to The Still some six blocks from where I live while trying to dampen the limp caused by a sore knee. Urban smarts stay with me in my suburban-like haunt about not looking too vulnerable on a darken street. The bar sits in a small strip mall sharing space with an aging convenience store/gas station, a one-man bike repair shop and a few other storefronts that seem to change tenants periodically. Across the street is a car wash and laundromat. It's a commercial center that wouldn't be called a destination for people outside the neighborhood.

The Still wasn't crowded. From the perch I took I could check out any pool game going on and eyeball everyone else seated around the horseshoe shape bar. Two stools away was a fat guy drinking his beer out of glass filled with ice who when I said hello mumbled something about just coming from the beach. A few minutes later another guy came in and sat between us. The two men spent the next 20 minutes talking about how tough it was to get a parking spot at the beach. After a while I had the urge to interject some new topic of conversation to move the blather beyond parking congestion. What did they think about the war in Ukraine? Worry about World War III? Lose anyone close to Covid? Not that I needed to know but I sorta wanted to know merely for an engagement with someone I didn't know as if to give me faith that Americans can avoid mental mediocrity.

I looked around the bar at other people. The effort seemed like a dance across a desert — eyeballs moving vertically while following the index finger, no words taken in beyond a headline, a few images to linger over, some videos that cracked a smile. Looking up only came to take a drink. I surveyed the TVs across the walls of the bar. No chyron announced, "Breaking News." I turned to listen again to the two men talking next to me. They were debating whether motorcycles should have their own reserved parking spaces. A guy two stools away on my other side was beginning to annoy the bartender because he kept trying to order another drink while trying to charge it to anyone else around him whose name he knew. The bartender presented his bill to him without a word. The word absurd lost all meaning to me.

The beach parking dilemma finally played out and the fat guy with the well-iced beer asked the bartender about the T-shirt he was wearing. "That a new shirt, the Aged Still?"

"No," said the bartender. "It's from a softball team we were sponsoring but everyone quit."

I thought about asking the bartender why everyone quit but let it go. Maybe it was the difficulty in finding a parking space at the ballfield.