mingyuan

On a Thursday night, I think about going to a meet-up.

I walk to the restaurant, but I don't see anyone I know inside, and I don't go in.

I sit on a bench nearby for half an hour, just watching people go back and forth, averting my ISO meetup goers won't recognize me.

A bus goes by.

Three minutes later, a woman around my age sees me sitting on the bench.

Excuse me, she says, do you know if the bus went by yet?

I wander away from the bench, but I don't want to go home yet.

I usually avoid the busier, more commercial streets when I'm out walking, but today I'm drawn to them.

I need to hear voices, I need things to look at, lights and colours and things that move.

I go into the Trader Joe's on the corner of my block, just because it's bright inside and full of people.

An older man asks an older woman if she knows where the coffee is.

This is something I will notice repeatedly and starkly.

that only older people talk to strangers, and they seem to have learned that young people don't want to be asked for things.

Is this a post-pandemic thing?

In 2019 at this same Trader Joe's I asked a guy my age to reach something off a high shelf for me and he was happy to oblige.

In any case, the older woman does not know where the coffee is.

Hi, I stick my head into the conversation.

Is this what it could be like to go through the world?

When I get home my upstairs neighbour is outside and I talk to him a bit.

He's in his sixties, too.