I had, for the most part, cut out my Tuesday night bar night. But yesterday, Tuesday, I got some disappointing and unexpected news: a job that I was told I was the clear front-runner for went to someone else. That seemed like a good enough reason to stop for a pint.
A guy I hang out with once every few months was there with his daughter. We talked a bit. A 7’1″ pro basketball player for the Dallas Mavericks was there (we didn’t talk). Another guy who I just met on Saturday at an outdoor concert was there. He sat next to me and we talked. New guy from Saturday is an avid biker (as in mountain/racing). He showed up at the outdoor show on Saturday having just finished a ride. He stopped for a beer or two and to smoke some weed. He’s a bit of an enigma. Almost fidgety, he jumps around in the conversation a lot. This makes having a conversation with him a little one-sided. At the bar he was showing me pictures on his phone. A graffiti tunnel from one of his rides, deer in his back yard, flowers, a ramshackle roadside stand selling eggs, a train, a picture of small town Americana (a gas station sign or something like that). The sign reminded me of the picture I took when I was in Clarksdale. I tried to find the image to show him, but he was already on to a different topic by the time I found it. I showed it to him anyway. I tried to explain the significance of Clarksdale and the concept behind the Shack Up Inn where the picture was taken. He started talking about the time he visited Gettysburg…
When he left, it was just me and my phone at the bar. I continued to scroll through photos. That trip to Clarksdale was just before I moved to State College. I had started dating my friend Stacy from Memphis – we went to Clarksdale together. I still had my cat Nick. The pictures made me miss both of them. I kept scrolling. There was my first major snow storm in State College, more pictures of Nick, more pictures of Stacy, zoom screenshots from Christmas, and eventually the dog… another trip to Clarksdale and then Savannah, and eventually just me and the dog and lots of poetry.
I thought about my new friend who bikes – my new friend whose mind seems to flit if not race. By comparison, I began to appreciate my slowness. I began to appreciate my willingness to linger, my willingness to follow the trails of ghosts, my willingness to wander paths a little longer than most. Looking at some of the pictures, I thought about how I’ve had good people and pets in my life. I thought about how good of a companion the dog was and how much he wanted to be around me – often sitting on my lap and trying to give me kisses. I may have to find a way to purge, or at least hide, all of those pictures. Though I haven’t done that with anyone/anything else. I have pictures of the cats and of a few exes. I have pictures of hikes, trips, concerts, and the two moves.
In some ways, my phone can be like an archeological dig – strata of my life from different time periods – though it only goes back a few years (maybe 2016). The most recent strata, the present moment, is mostly filled with screenshots of poems I like, some selfies I might use on dating profiles, and the dog. I should probably be taking pictures of the bars I frequent… here’s my sometimes Tuesday night bar, my Thursday bar, and Otto’s, my Friday bar. That would be a fair representation of my time here: either at home reading, writing, scrolling social media, and looking for jobs or out at a bar with friends or strangers.
Not getting the job filled me with mixed feelings. It was going to be tough to live on the salary they were offering, but it was going to afford me some free time to write more. The job and living situation were challenges I was willing to work through. The prospect gave me something to plan around. The setback of not getting it made me question if I’m heading in the right direction, professionally and geographically. The setback made me question if I’m taking the right approach. I went to the bar because I didn’t really want to ponder those questions and I didn’t want to hop back on that horse and start looking again. (Despite knowing better, I have a tendency to stop looking when an interview process is going well – I do the same thing in dating).
I didn’t expect to run into biker guy or to be sitting there looking through old photos on my phone… and only now upon reflection does that scenario seem entirely predictable. When the future we envision begins to fade or our circumstances change, we look to the past for comfort and familiarity – for reminders of where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and to re-calibrate where we might be on the map.