Lately, I have had a lot of alone time. I have always enjoyed spending time by myself. Have time to think. Time to ponder. Time to talk to my cat and myself.
Saturdays are the best days for alone time, although I am alone all the other days too, but Saturdays are the best. A long breakfast, coffee and the newspaper. I subscribe to two newspapers because both are delivered so infrequently. However, both are delivered on my doorstep on Saturdays and Sundays. I wonder if this is a conspiracy as they are delivered by the same postman. One is conservative, while the other is more left leaning. They balance each other out in a way. I´m conservative but like to appear open to impulses, which I often point out to my cat. Deep down, I feel the left-wing paper is immature and seems more like an unscrupulous school magazine where you can’t tell what’s editorial and what’s just someone’s opinion.
I am a routine person. Or rather I have become one in my older days. I´ve come to realise that my old days are now. Once upon a time I was a radical anarchist, if I remember correctly. You can’t always rely entirely on memory when you’re older. But a little more radical than now, anyway. If I’m being completely honest and not just relying on memory, I’ve probably always been a bit of a conservative at heart. I’ve always believed that people should be able to behave in society. Even anarchists should be able to behave properly! For example, I never really had a taste for rugged looking squatters who were so popular in the 80s.
After breakfast, updates from the world and a shower. Then I plan my regular Saturday errands.
On Saturdays, empty wine bottles are delivered for recycling. Then the trip to the butcher. We discuss the weather, news and which steak to choose for today. Then the wine collection will be reinforced with a couple-three-six bottles or something like that.
Every time I stack the empty wine bottles in bags for recycling, I’m amazed at how many there are from one Saturday to the next. I don´t deliver the recycling every week! I answer my own question pre-emptively. I can repeat this several times in case the cat didn’t get it the first time I said it. It’s not strictly speaking a lie when you lie to yourself.
Around noon I am finally ready to stroll out into my street. I never take the weather conditions into account when I dress. I never check if it’s raining or snowing before I go out. I’m still radical there anyway! I feel both tough, brave and maybe a little anarchist by not checking the weather. It’s a violation of society’s norms in any case. I dress how I feel, and the weather just has to deal with it! The cat knew this well because she had been informed about this many times.
I don’t know many people in the neighbourhood despite having lived here for 25 years. I acknowledge the neighbours with a nod as they pass by, but we never speak on the street or if we become aware of each other at the neighbourhood café for that matter.
The only neighbour I talk to, if this could be called conversation, is a guy who lives on the second floor and always comes down the stairs at breakneck speed, always smiling while he shouts, laughs and waves his arms. I’ve never understood a word he says or if he means anything by what he says. But I smile, wave my arms, and shout something back at him. I don’t think I’m actually shouting words back either. Just sounds that can be interpreted as genuine joy of seeing him again.
Otherwise, I only occasionally exchange a few words with someone who want to appeal to my conscience and collect donations to help children fleeing war and disasters and other good causes. They have clearly taken courses to learn some catchphrases to make the targets stop. “Do you live nearby?” “Is that a real hat?” As opposed to what? Sometimes I stop and act welcoming, but most of the time I´m dismissive and answer as nonsensically as they asked. When asked if it was a real hat, I replied that it was a salamander. They had not been instructed on how to continue that conversation.
After running my regular errands, I swing by the neighbourhood café and hope my favourite table by the window is vacant.
The waiter and I play the same role every Saturday. Both know that this is a role-playing game and that the audience are the other guests. If anyone were to listen to what was being said, they would be left with the impression that this was a genuine conversation. I tip him enough so that he plays his part to the fullest without being ironic. It always starts with me ordering a cup of coffee. He waits because he knows this won’t be the final order. Then I change my mind and want a Cappuccino instead since it’s Saturday after all. And since it is Saturday, how about a glass of red wine instead? We always end up with a carafe of red wine before the waiter saunters off.
This is what life has come to. Me sitting alone by the window with a carafe of wine as my only company. Sitting and watching life pass by outside. The tram is full of people going somewhere. Buzzing voices in the café. Faint table music from a piano.
Was it ever different? Was there so much more playfulness in me in my younger years? Life can only be understood… was it backwards..? Can life be understood at all? I firmly believe that life can be understood! But backwards?
What did Nina say all those years ago? Something about it being a strange memory that only works backwards. If memory also worked forwards, life would be easier to understand, she claimed. I got a headache just thinking about it.
Over the years, due to my dark features, many have believed that I had ancestors from southern latitudes. Including myself. If any ancestors had gone ashore and met local girls, it certainly didn’t show up on the DNA test. My genes had been here since the dawn of time, and here they were supposed to stay. At least in my time. I took a DNA test to do some genealogy research but ended up with several great-great-grandfathers, so the family tree looked more like a weird bush than a tree.
So here I was, in the middle of my life, trying to make sense of it all. I consider myself middle-aged, but that’s only true if I live to be 120. The average life expectancy is 81.4 years, so you’re middle-aged when you’re 40.7 years old, mathematically speaking. But did I feel middle-aged when I was 40? There are many memories that are gone from that time, but I definitely remember that I wasn’t middle-aged then!
Life still felt young 20 years ago. I had a bucket list of things I wanted to do back then. I thought there was still plenty of time to live out my dream as a free man who could travel wherever and whenever it suited me, living like a sort of itinerant beach bum. Diving was also an old dream that was in the bucket 20 years ago. Old wrecks with gold doubloons that only I knew about. How I, who had never been underwater for more than a minute, could have knowledge of old gold treasures did not worry me 20 years ago. But life happened and nothing ever came of that dream. It wasn’t that I missed it either. Everything else happened instead. Surprisingly few things when I think about it. But time passed anyway.
I still have the bucket, but now it is filled with things I would never start or achieve. “Let the dream die” was what was written on the bucket now. Let the dream die was an appropriate slogan for where I am in life now. Life has become half past two in the afternoon. Half past two is the time when it is too early to go home from work and too late to start something new.
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past two.
There were still 10 minutes left.
Billy Bronco is telling you 