I saw her

A remarkably uninteresting looking woman. Grey- ish hair, sharp features, worries and concerns of a life that I will never know about… she sat there across the bar. Neither smiling nor frowning. Slowly eating her grey food, dressed in her grey cardigan. She had braved to sit at a bar by herself, risking attention or, worse still, no attention. She knew the flames of loneliness her life had been consigned to. Others had to catch up, or not. 

She moved slowly. Her hands navigating the food, very deliberately. It was in slow motion. Was she sad ? was she lonely? was she content? was she… something. It was hard to know. 

It brought me back to some early morning hours at at safari in Africa. An adult lion ambling though the savannah, just as slowly as this woman was eating her food. All other animals were in groups, the Zebras, the Wildebeasts, even birds.. they all had something in common, friends. Not the Lion. Not her across the bar. Not me even, today at-least, I reflected as I nursed my beer. 

She looked sad, the lion looked ambivalent or resigned, and I? I don’t know what I looked like. I was just taking it in. First time this evening I became aware of the music. The sight of a lonely old woman, whom no one will speak to the whole evening, including me; even though she may be the Madam Curie of our times, or a musician or a mother who put put three kids through Harvard and MIT… I will never know. She may be interesting, but wasn’t pretty any more. And was sitting at a bar by herself. All crimes enough to be punished with lonliness. Or at-least aloneness. That’s how we roll here in America.