strangers.

I read this book once about quitting smoking. The only thing I remember is the chapter about how we talk about quitting. You should never say, I’m trying to quit or I’m quitting smoking. You should say, I quit. The idea is that language has the power to create something in us. Say it like it’s true. I think this applies to other things in life, not least of all writing. At least it’s something I’ve been practicing on myself, to what end I’m not sure. I write every day and I feel it someplace deep inside of me, so I don’t say, I want to write. Simply, I am a writer. Whether it’s garbage or not, whatever role it plays, it’s something I do and it is part of who I am. So I just say it quietly, in my own head.

A list of good things to do:
-observe
-note details
-remember

I have always been overwhelmed by cities for one reason: the people. There are so many people, people you don’t know, strangers. I take strangers into myself and digest them. I observe. I stare. I drown in the details - a shirt corner untucked, chipped toe nail polish, sad eyes. I imagine stories about people. They live lives in my own head, they go to work, they come home at the end of the day. I can’t help it. I can’t turn it off. I am obsessed with the lives of strangers.

Living in a city now, I find myself getting friendly with strangers in my mind. I see the same people on the streets each day. I’ve woven elaborate lives for them and they’ve become like characters in some novel that I walk back and forth through. The sweaty man with the labored run. The old woman wearing the fanny pack. The girl with long legs and bad posture. They’ve become part of the fabric of my day.

I also empathize with strangers, mostly people I imagine to be sad or alone. Sometimes the feelings in me are so powerful I have to hold myself back from acting out. I want to stop that man on the street, the one with the big headphones, close-trimmed beard, thin wire glasses, legs too short for his body - I want to stop him and say, Are you alright? Are you lonely? Are you walking back to an empty house tonight? Maybe we’ll drink a cup of coffee together and I’ll ask him what he believes about god, what he thinks about human nature. And he’ll go home that night and maybe, maybe he’s felt bitterly isolated and disconnected from humanity and I can remind him what it feels like to have a witness to your life and to your thoughts.

Maybe he isn’t lonely. Maybe I am projecting my own fears and emotional dysfunction onto him (it’s possible).

I want to remember the man at the street market in New Orleans. This is what I mean: people get into my brain, right into the folds of it, and they’re burned in there. The eyes, the expressions, the way the shoulders droop. It was June in New Orleans and the humidity made it impossible to walk quickly, to breathe deeply. I walked through a large, tented street market - cheap clothes, jewelry, New Orleans souvenirs. I only went in because I wanted to be in the shade. I walked through each aisle, glancing over tiny plastic alligators and Mardi Gras beads. And then I saw a man hunched over, seated behind a table. He was turned away from market perusers while eating his lunch. I caught sight of him through the back curtain of his booth. His eyes were low and he was slowly, deliberately cutting a hard boiled egg into slices with a plastic spoon. I stared hard while he thought he was alone. All day I couldn't stop asking, Who boiled that egg?

We’ve got to wonder at people’s lives. I hope someone, somewhere is wondering at mine. It is the most honest witness to life.  Not living, just pure human life.