Socrates at the Diner

The Upper West Side's Metro Diner is fast becoming my favorite place to eavesdrop over breakfast. There is always some boisterously opinionated writer or professor or loudmouth who stepped out of a late-seventies Woody Allen film to pontificate over five rounds of coffee and plates of bacon to his mild-mannered and mostly silent companion.

I always carry a book with me, but the neighboring monologue never fails to prove more arresting. The pontificator is generally someone who, if cast in a movie, would be flawlessly portrayed by Wallace Shawn. His tone is typically one of controlled outrage, along the lines of "how can no one but me understand the absurdity of this situation?" And the voice is significantly louder than the average level of conversation in the vicinity, like some sort of innate PR tactic, sharing his brilliance with those who can't help but choose to listen to this windblown Socrates.

This is precisely the sort of eccentric character a transient from a small town expects to find inhabiting a quintessential New York City diner, and the effect is not unlike listening to a well-informed but kooky conspiracy theorist who can't help but impress you with the range of his imagination. In other words, prime entertainment. What fascinates me most is the impression that this person shares a similar, but not entirely identical, universe as me, and I wonder what it's like for him.