The worn faux-bronze plaque on the similarly worn wooden table encourages patrons to sit with strangers “as in Germany,” plainly contradicting the current social mores (if only due to age). The waitress, curly brown hair tied back in a ponytail, fashionable black tanktop over somewhat more utilitarian green shorts, brings out a glass of golden-yellow pilsner and a hot pretzel, accompanied on its plate by rock salt and two squirts of different mustards. I can’t see her nose or lips under her mask; it seems fair that she can’t see my eyes.
For all the effort put into the creation of these little streetside beer gardens and cafe tables over the past year and a half, their illusion is consistently undone by the persistent hiss of tire noise and the rumble of the occasional large engine. They’re an imperfect solution, but that’s hardly a strike against these outdoor spaces; in this world, especially over the last couple years, perfect solutions aren’t easy to find.
As regional temperatures spike yet again from the uncomfortable into the deadly this little vignette takes on an absurd tinge; sitting in the shade, comfortably enjoying wheat and water and hops and malt, while reading about failing crops, dwindling reservoirs, and forests consumed in flame. Meanwhile, an impossible distance away, a national government made up of calcified bureaucrats and intractable elites dithers away the days, alternately arguing pointless minutiae or pitching pointlessly draconian solutions to non-issues.
Personally I’ve been stressed out by climate change to some degree or another for at least my entire adult life. A decade ago, though it seems like a lifetime, most of these issues were the same, but between a charismatic leader and limited evidence, the threat was less concrete. That didn’t stop my anxiety; I decried the Paris Accords as toothless, other measures as inadequate, always fearing a future where claiming I once knew the taste of beef and whiskey was laughable. Back then I worried I was an alarmist — now more and more people are arriving where I once was, and I’m just exhausted.
This observation is just as toothless, to be clear. Large-scale change is an inescapable necessity if Terra is to remain habitable for our species, much moreso to curb the worst effects. But I’ve done nothing to that end; I work in tech, use more than my share of electricity gleefully, my habits almost certainly damage the world more than they restore it. Not that it’s a lot of harm compared to the handful of the people at the top. But I am, as ever, a hypocrite.
The waitress takes my now-empty plate, asks if I’m “doing alright on beer,” which I confirm that I am. Take my last few sips, listen in as the neighboring table fawns over an old golden retriever as it walks by. Pay my tab, digital values moving from one array to another rather than any physical exchange. The hiss of the cars continues throughout. Progress, it seems, is unwilling to stop for now.