Peculiar Dignity

4:48:00 PM

Pho and Viet Coffee, Somewhere in between lunch and dinner.

It's Saturday afternoon. I wouldn't have gotten out of bed if I hadn't made plans earlier in the morning. But plans finished quickly and I found myself determined to make this a day better than all the shitty, shitty days of this past week.

Some people call it courageous...
To be able to walk into a restaurant, smile warmly at the maitre d' when he looks at you questioningly and say "Just one, thanks. Can I take the seat by the window?"
I remember looking at the people sitting alone in the middle of the restaurant calmly eating their food and staring at their phones.
I remember wondering whether I should pity them or admire them.
Now I wonder how they are looking at me.

This isn't really the type of place people come to laptop camp. It's the only pho joint in this little college town and people usually come here for dates and/or hangovers. But I've been craving pho for a while and I needed to get some work done. It's strange, but being here alone... it's the most peace I've felt all week.

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, eating alone, that is. I only just realized I never wrote about my third day in New York, which was probably the most uneventful day as well as the most important day. It was the day I spent entirely alone. (It's all related I promise)

What do you do when you're alone in New York? There are probably lots of things. But all I wanted to do was just walk around. I went into every single store that looked interesting, ate every bit of food I wanted and could feasibly fit into my stomach at the time. But there was one thing I knew I especially wanted to do: have dinner at a nice restaurant that I would never even have thought about going into if I was with someone else.

"Just one, thanks. Chef's bar? Yes, that's perfect."

I don't think I could have even gotten into this place if I wasn't by myself, it seemed like all their tables were booked out. There's a poem by Stanley Elkin, The Peculiar Dignity of Men Seen Eating Alone at Restaurants... could use a better title, maybe. But he captures the strange aura of these moments.

Some say eating alone is depressing,

but nonsense, it's the way to go

to prove to yourself that loneliness will not

be the death of you. It's got it's good points

nobody else to eat the good bread from the basket

no judgment that you shouldn't have another drink

perhaps that isn't enough

but even at the worst points, you can look up

and the waitress will smile

and you'll tell her how wonderful the soup is

and in that moment, things will seem quiet.

I remember first learning the word "melancholy" in third grade from the book "Because of Winn Dixie." God, what genius in literature. In the story, the main character is given a piece of candy, a Littmus Lozenge, made by a candy maker who lived a tragic life. And when she tastes it, it's bittersweet and she is reminded of the memories of her mother who left her when she was three. Her father calls the taste melancholy.
There are those who taste the sadness and spit it out, and there are those who taste the sadness and keep it, turning it around and around their mouth until it fades away.

I always worry about running away from bitterness. I also worry about drowning in it. But there are moments like these that are like Littmus Lozenges. Bittersweet moments where, for an hour or two, it all hangs in a delicate balance.
I sit, I write.
The people are kind, and I smile easily,
I eat well and wrap my hands around my cup of coffee.
I recall sweet memories and taste the bitterness of their passing.
I'm alone. I'm also lucky.
I tip well. The maitre d' smiles as I pass.

"The flavor of the Littmus Lozenge opened in my mouth, like a flower blooming, all sweet and sad."
-Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo