In A Coffee Shop

In a coffee shop

I stop

And sip

And watch.

A mother and her young son,

Helping him with homework.

A college girl and her laptop,

Two high school boys glancing,

Laughing at their imaginary scenarios,

Glancing.

A boy with earbuds inserted

Fingers a portable computer game.

An attractive woman in her forties enters,

Turning the head of a lonely man

Disinterestedly reading a newspaper

To keep from staring.

The attractive woman orders a regular coffee of the day

From the aproned young man behind the counter

With his stylishly close-cropped facial hair.

Because she is mad at her husband

She smiles at the skinny young coffee vendor

And puts a five dollar bill into his tip jar.

The mother opens a wide, brightly illustrated picture book,

“The Magic Flute,”

And tells her son about Mozart.

“Oh yeah. Mozart!” says the nine-year-old boy,

“I love that guy!”

The mother, who looks dark and Italian, smiles.

Her light-skinned, fair-haired boy

Looks more like his father,

A happy, enthusiastic, silly boy,

His arms and legs animated by the hits of the eighties

Playing in the background.

The college girl looks up from her laptop

To see if anyone is watching her,

So I try not to be noticed,

Middle-aged man that I am,

Too old to be admiring such a pretty young girl,

Not beautiful,

But pretty with the gloss of untarnished youth.

She sees the high school boys glancing at her

And turns her attention back to her laptop screen.

They are too young and silly.

She will know him when she sees him,

The one she is waiting for.

The lonely man, comfortable in his well-worn suit and tie,

Watches the attractive woman with the faded gold hair

And imagines her whispering:

“I love you,”

But he will not speak.

He is also in his forties but still waiting,

Waiting for an invitation.

The earbud boy chugs his coffee,

Picks at the acne on his chin,

Swings his backpack over one shoulder

And walks out the door.

He doesn’t want to say anything to anybody.

The dark-skinned mother says:

“This is my son who will love me forever.”

Her young son says:

“Let’s have fun all the time!”

The college girl says:

“Can you hear me O secret love? I am here.”

The lonely man is afraid to speak,

He expects disappointment.

The attractive woman says:

“My husband has fallen asleep and will not wake.

I am not ordinary.”

The two young men say:

“What a joke. People are so stupid!”

The skinny coffee vendor says:

“Why can’t I be like you? Why am I the servant?”

And I say:

“Here in this small coffee shop,

All the constellations of the universe.”

None of us say these things out loud.

One by one we finish our coffee and leave,

Pretending we are separate.

~ by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Age Of The Pure Self

 

Anarchy,

Not just for the dispossessed anymore,

It's catching on like wildfire,

A fad,

A new sport for the upper crust,

For those separated from the great mass

By privilege,

Power,

Perception.

This perception of superiority,

Now this is the motive force,

Not just for the well-to-do anymore,

No,

Even the lowest inhabitants of the social order

Feel superior these days.

Now,

In our cities and our streets,

In our homes and office buildings,

In all manner of public and private places,

Now,

No one is safe from this self-righteous anarchy.

This is war.

To each their own pure self,

The pure self that needs no law,

That bends to no man, woman or child,

That considers not its own frailties,

Sees no larger world beyond itself,

Enforces its iron rule without mercy,

No matter how trivial or mundane its kingdom may be.

Nor more humility,

No backing up,

No admission of error,

Of guilt,

Of responsibility.

All actions and motives of the pure self are beyond question.

We encounter one another

In our day-to-day lives

And exchange the menacing glance.

All is understood.

Ours is the age of the pure self.

~ Poem & Image by Russ Allison Loar

© All Rights Reserved

Collections

The first things I collected were stuffed animals, but only two of them slept with me at night. Of all my friends and playmates, I dearly loved the little gray cat and floppy brown and tan spotted dog who slept under the covers and kept me from feeling lonely at bedtime.

I’ve never lived anywhere very long without cats. I sleep with a little calico cat named Sally now.

I collected small metal cars and loved to drive them around cities I made from colored blocks.

I collected 45 rpm records, songs I heard on the radio. I listened to them over and over again. Each week when I went to the music store for my trumpet lesson, I bought a new “single” to add to my collection. I pretended I was a disc jockey and would announce each record I played.

One summer I won a contest on radio station KFWB by being the first caller. I talked to disc jockey Gary Owens and he sent me a Gary Owens coloring book and KFWB bumper sticker.

When I was 42 years old and working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Newport Beach, California, I did daily newscasts for a local FM radio station. Someone once told me they heard me in a supermarket where the station was playing.

I collected coins and stamps, ordering them from catalogues and putting them into albums. I looked through everyone’s pennies, trying to find a 1909-S VDB, the rarest of Lincoln pennies. It never turned up. I learned that the reason certain coins and stamps were worth so much money was the same reason I’d never find them.

I began investing seriously in my late 40s, having more luck in recognizing an undervalued stock than knowing when to sell it. I learned that for many investments, value and worth are temporary.

As I grew up, my collections shifted from things to experiences. I collected friends, lovers and accomplishments. I collected books I’d read. I collected knowledge and learning. I collected songs and poems I wrote. I collected performances I played as a musician. I collected the talented musicians I played with. After I became a newspaper reporter, I collected my best published stories. I collected every famous and interesting person I met.

I collected family photographs, all the way back to great grandparents, arranging them in albums. I collected my family, my parents and grandparents, the years of my marriage, the companionship of my sons. I'm waiting to collect a grandchild or two.

I collect memories and as I grow old they reveal meanings to me I’d never fully understood. I collect the acts of kindness I’ve received and try to pass them on to others. I collect wisdom and continue to learn and relearn the lessons I’ve been taught from those still living and those who have passed on, their words still speaking to me.

I collect knowledge of the joy and sadness in this world, the tragedies and victories of the spirit, the damnations and the revelations. Sometimes it’s all too much and so I pack some of my collections away in boxes and label them, knowing I can always go back and unpack, knowing I’ll never look inside some of these boxes again, knowing all things change and life should move forward, mindfully forward.

My house is full of things useful and decorous, impractical and silly, remnants of a long life. I look at these things and they remind me of who I have been, who I still am. I suppose I will never completely discard my past, as long as it has something to teach me. I suppose all that I’ve collected has been an attempt to preserve happiness, wisdom and love.

Someday I will leave all these collections behind, passing these objects and their meanings on to others, but keeping the joy of having lived on this Earth in my eternal heart.

~ Text and photograph by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved