In This Life

I have just come home from college for the last time. Having graduated a little over a week ago now my existence is wrapped around finding myself something to do for the rest of my life. Or maybe just for the next year.

I am sitting at Chromatic Coffee in Santa Clara and am supposed to be filling out a ridiculously long application for an internship at a church in the area. I have found myself distracted for the last hour.

I’m sitting at a bar seat, right against the window, facing out into the parking lot that is shared by a mix of food places, beauty salons, and a Bed, Bath and Beyond. My view of the umbrella-ed outdoor seating area, parking lot, and then busy street is partially obscured by the CHROMATIC Coffee Co. scrawled across the window in painted letters.

I notice a man getting out of a car. To be honest and maybe a little judgmental, he is really scruffy looking. He has worn out leather shoes and baggy brown corduroy pants. He is wearing three layers of shirts. The one on the bottom is a cotton button down, the next is also made of corduroy, the top layer being thin sweatshirt that would look at home on someone walking along the beaches of Santa Cruz. He has an impressive dark beard, and unkept longish dark hair. He carries with him a faded blue backpack with many packets and has another orange bag slung across his body that I can only think to describe as a satchel that looks like it was made from some organic (or at least recycled fabric) material in a foreign country.He has a copper squiggly ring on one of his fingers and I like to think that he made it himself. If i had to categorize or generalize the overall look of this man, it would not be homeless, but rather, a traveler.

Not atypical for this affluent area of the Bay, as I am typing away about my views on poverty, justice, and compassion issues, trying to present myself as worthy of working for this particular church, I see a Porsche pull into a rockstar parking spot right in front of the coffeeshop.

It is from this snazzy vehicle that this unkept man emerges.

I watch him come into the coffeeshop, order a coffee at the counter, and then find a place outside on the patio to sit. He first chooses a place at a table under and umbrella and pulls and old-looking book out of his backpack. He opens the book and looks at one of the pages for a few minutes before setting the book down and observes his surroundings. He also pulls and iPhone from his pocket and spends some time looking at that as well. After a few moments he comes back inside the shop to retrieve his cup and saucer.

His drink is consumed in just a few minutes.

He returns to his book. Directionally, he is facing me in his seated position and I am able to see that the book he is reading is entitled “Education and the Significance of Life.” Naturally, I Google this book title. It is written by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Google Books is helpful in letting me know that in this book, Krishnamurti “maintains that if the individual could learn to see his conditioniong of race, nationality, religion, dogma, tradition, etc., as inevitably leading to conflict, then he could begin to undo their damaging influence.”

I am so fascinated by this man that I text a close friend and my boyfriend a running commentary of my observations. I remark that I “cannot top marveling at his existence.”

I note that I just “love human beings.”

I describe the way that he seems unable to concentrate on one action for more than a moment. He looks at his book for a moment, looking up anytime someone passes by his table. He looks at his phone, he looks around. He stands and leaves his table, goes to the Porsche and retrieves a bright blue knitted beanie with a pompom of the same color at the top and places it upon his head.

I want this man to be a college professor.

I want him to have just spent 7 years at a monastery in Thailand.

I want him to have just had his old beat up Jeep break down because the battery is completely dead from its underuse over the past few years because of his travels and at the dealership where it is being repaired, the only available rental car is a Porsche.

Or I want him to be on Forbe’s list of the world’s billionaires and chooses to use his wealth in sporadic ways. His wardrobe not being the priority but rather vehicles and custom-made fishtanks.

My boyfriend suggests that he is maybe the Second Coming. And that he wouldn’t mind me offering to buy this man a drink because he just can’t compete with Jesus.

Both of my friends who are now as invested in this observation as I am suggest that I must talk to him.

This man is restless. He reads, he watches, he gets up to pace on the small stretch of concrete on the patio behind his table, he moves to a table in the sun but leaves his two bags on the chairs underneath the umbrella where he started, he looks as though he is thinking very hard. He answers the phone a few times, or his the one placing the call. His keyring, holding the keys of that black Porsche, is in his hand the entire time that he is sitting, or standing, or pacing.

It is at this point that I realize that I wish I was better at reading lips.

It is at this point that it begins to dawn on me how creepy I am being.

He gathers all his things, his old book goes into that satchel, and he enters the coffeeshop again. It is easy to watch him through stolen glances through a window obscured by panted letters but I refuse to turn around and observe his actions in the coffeeshop. I am trying to “be cool.”

I am urged by a now-very-invested-friend to offer him a spot at my table.

He leaves the coffeeshop before I can entertain that proposition for too long. He stands out by his car now, balancing himself on the edge of the curb, talking on his iPhone, I notice the screen is shattered. The longest conversation he has had so far.

Now that he is focused on one activity and is partially obscured by a tree that stands in this parking lot, I find my attention being shifted back to my internship application. I almost don’t notice as he walks around to the other side of the car, gets in the driver’s side, backs out, and drives the Porsche out of my line of sight of this parking lot.

A man came to a coffeeshop, drank a cup of coffee and left.