Monday
Mar212011
You Can't Go Back Again
Monday, March 21, 2011
When I got off work yesterday, this guy I know was standing out in the wet snow playing his saxophone. He stood out under the eaves of this brown brick bank blowing on the instrument over his hard-back case.
I waved as I crossed the street, but, instead of turning right in his direction, I turned left to walk away from him. There is a whole world of people I met at the pub I drank at for nearly a decade, and I don't know what to do now when I see someone from that period, one that is at once not very long ago and a lifetime away, so I walk left and try to think about what meal I'm going to eat next or what pictures I would like to take. I distract myself with sundries to avoid thinking about beer.
I got about a block away from the guy before I realized that I had to turn around. I wanted to take his picture. I so rarely interact with people who aren't my co-workers or my husband these days that I wanted to take his picture, and so I stopped to fumble with the change in my wallet. I felt like I couldn't just walk up and start shooting without throwing some change into his saxophone case. It would have felt rude.
When I'd counted out a few coins, I started walking back. It seemed strange to me and far more awkward now that I was throwing money into an old acquaintance's instrument case as payment for some photos I wanted to take in lieu of proper conversation, but there I was doing it, throwing a few quarters onto the royal blue velvet lining and bending down to get an upshot of his face.
I took the photos too fast for them to be any good. He was moving with his saxophone and I was taking the photos while still dropping to bend at the knee and it was a public corner and I felt uncomfortable about the quarters and the pictures, and then he poured on some schmalz for my camera. No sooner had I bent down than I was rising up again and turning to leave. I didn't know what to say. I wasn't even sure why I had turned back. I was a block away before I realized that I hadn't even said so much as hello or goodbye to him.
Afterwards, when I was about halfway home, I suddenly remembered the first time I met him. He was busking for beer money at that pub, or at least he was wanting to busk, but he couldn't afford to fix the pads under the saxophone's keys. We gave him matchbook covers and bits of cardboard torn from cigarette packages, which he jambed under bits of the instrument, and then he let loose with some old school jazz, and we all threw coins at his case where he played on the wooden boardwalk that was constructed just for the summer to extend the patio. Some of the coins missed, tipped and fell through the wooden slats, and they were found later that fall, dark with spilled beer and cigarette ash, when they tore up the walk to make way for winter.
For a moment I could taste the buttery last heat of late afternoon summer sun cutting across my mouth, and I knew, really knew, that I would not be there in that place to feel that again, and I wished I hadn't stopped to go back and throw money into his case, because it's true what they say.
You can't go back again.
I waved as I crossed the street, but, instead of turning right in his direction, I turned left to walk away from him. There is a whole world of people I met at the pub I drank at for nearly a decade, and I don't know what to do now when I see someone from that period, one that is at once not very long ago and a lifetime away, so I walk left and try to think about what meal I'm going to eat next or what pictures I would like to take. I distract myself with sundries to avoid thinking about beer.
I got about a block away from the guy before I realized that I had to turn around. I wanted to take his picture. I so rarely interact with people who aren't my co-workers or my husband these days that I wanted to take his picture, and so I stopped to fumble with the change in my wallet. I felt like I couldn't just walk up and start shooting without throwing some change into his saxophone case. It would have felt rude.
When I'd counted out a few coins, I started walking back. It seemed strange to me and far more awkward now that I was throwing money into an old acquaintance's instrument case as payment for some photos I wanted to take in lieu of proper conversation, but there I was doing it, throwing a few quarters onto the royal blue velvet lining and bending down to get an upshot of his face.
I took the photos too fast for them to be any good. He was moving with his saxophone and I was taking the photos while still dropping to bend at the knee and it was a public corner and I felt uncomfortable about the quarters and the pictures, and then he poured on some schmalz for my camera. No sooner had I bent down than I was rising up again and turning to leave. I didn't know what to say. I wasn't even sure why I had turned back. I was a block away before I realized that I hadn't even said so much as hello or goodbye to him.
Afterwards, when I was about halfway home, I suddenly remembered the first time I met him. He was busking for beer money at that pub, or at least he was wanting to busk, but he couldn't afford to fix the pads under the saxophone's keys. We gave him matchbook covers and bits of cardboard torn from cigarette packages, which he jambed under bits of the instrument, and then he let loose with some old school jazz, and we all threw coins at his case where he played on the wooden boardwalk that was constructed just for the summer to extend the patio. Some of the coins missed, tipped and fell through the wooden slats, and they were found later that fall, dark with spilled beer and cigarette ash, when they tore up the walk to make way for winter.
For a moment I could taste the buttery last heat of late afternoon summer sun cutting across my mouth, and I knew, really knew, that I would not be there in that place to feel that again, and I wished I hadn't stopped to go back and throw money into his case, because it's true what they say.
You can't go back again.
categorized in health, personal history and tagged in alcoholism, music, nostalgia, past, saxophones
health, personal history and tagged in alcoholism, music, nostalgia, past, saxophones 
Reader Comments (7)
I read this post twice.....and still don't know what to say.
It leaves a ball in my throat. Moving forward allows for new memories, new summer days and crisp summer mornings....I guess we have to have faith that movement and time will somehow blunt the edges of the hard stuff we are trying to move beyond.
xo
ugh. there's longing, regret, tenderness, confusion... so much stuff in here. I'm glad you wrote about it, I'd be working to process how I felt about coming across someone from my "old life" too.
He was playing real good for free. Joni Mitchell would have understood.
Loved this post. xo
Love this post, love the pics, love love as always your honesty and insight.
This post is why I read blogs. So well-written. Beautiful.
You have a gift for writing such masterful, full stories in your blog.