Posting these things is like ripping open my heart. Except I want to do it.

4 October 2001

Her nyloned calves like shimmering sausage
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

THREE OBSERVATIONS

1.
We went to Cafe Strindberg the other day to have some coffee. Ordinary conversation ensued over pastry and espresso. Matilda prattled on, as she always does. In the brief lulls of prattle, Melina interjected some gloomy thought. I gloomily answered and interposed my own gloomy thoughts. Everything was normal. Then I noticed two tables away was a person who looked like my high school love, HH, a.k.a the Pakistani Heart Crusher. I doubt it was her. It really doesn't matter. Ten years is a long time to be over someone, to be sitting at a table with wife and kids and over a high school flame. But I was filled the memory of how powerfully I felt for her a decade ago. And her or not, I trembled inside. I wanted to know, but was afraid to ask. I even imaged the lady with her was an aunt I'd seen once. I could hear fragments of their conversation. The Hina-look-a-like had an American accent, her companion some other. My thoughts scattered and I couldn't concentrate. Words swirled around me, memories and feelings long since buried jumped up and down my spine. How shockingly close the past remains. How strange things can be retrieved so vividly, so easily. How shocking to find myself here, when once I was there.

2.
5.30pm, bus 20 was filling with people leaving work. Only half the front door was open, since the driver was resting in parts unknown. I had to wait outside with Owen and his stroller until the driver could open the sidedoors for me. Early in the wait, a woman carrying a blue wicker chair, complete with cushions, tried to enter the half open front door. The chair didn't fit. She tried it many different ways. Sideways, legs first, back first. Nothing worked. I watched her closely. She had such a pleading earnest look. I laugh a bit to myself, but she noticed me doing it. She stopped and waited for the driver. As we waited, the bus became crowded. Worried, she often looked around for the driver. Eventually we both got on. During the trip we stood near each other, standing by the side door. She kept meeting my eyes and seemed to ask why I'd laughed. The whole thing amused me. The bus filled to capacity, but she had her chair. There we were, going forward with all our stuff, with everything we decided to carry along with us. At every stop she moved the chair for those leaving the bus. At my stop, I left her and her chair. I'll never know why she was moving it or where it ended up.

3.
On bus 66A, homeward. A teenage boy sat on the aisle seat of our bench, immediately behind the side door. At one stop a woman with a stroller tried to get in. She had one daughter and a son in the stroller. Though people were coming down the aisle, past the struggling woman, none even looked at her, much less offered to help. I wondered why she had not asked for help herself. Women often make a general plea for help when no one offers. I tried to move past the boy blocking me to help, but he did not understand my physical gesture. As I began to ask him to move, the woman managed to get the stroller up the steps onto bus. So I remained silent. She spoke French to her children. She spoke French on her cell phone when it rang. Perhaps she didn't know how to ask for help in Finnish. Somewhere along the line a drunk got on the bus. A professional drunk, there was nothing occasional about his condition. His reek filled my nose and I looked at him. His face was slightly irregular, but it was hard to say what was out of place. Maybe his eyes didn't line up quite right. His nose had been broken and healed askew, and he had the common scars of a drunk. Drunks' faces have very intimate relationships with pavement. They seem irresitably attracted to each other. I often look at the drunks. They live in some distant world that I cannot reach. But they have not given up the world, so much as given in to addiction. Their eyes are usually vacuous. Empty globes emitting nothing, seeing nothing further than their bottle and alcohol rattled thoughts. But his were different. His eyes seemed to plead for help, to wish he was not drunk. But he could not help himself. I saw the bottle stuck in his inside pocket. The kind of hooch one step up from rubbing alcohol. While I looked at him, his loose tobacco pounch fell from his pocket. No one said anything to him, though many watched it drop. I watched the others silence before I was decided to say something. But before I could point it out the French lady left her seat, picked it up and gave it to him with a kind smile. He seemed touched by her action. I was touched by her humane look, the gentle way she handed him the tobacco. Unaided in her need, she willingly helped the drunk. I've thought about the man. I am what I am due to random circumstance. What credit can I take for how I am? Will Power, Free Will, these things are fine ideals, but how much can we trust them? And for maybe the first time I felt true empathy. I have a very dogmatic view of empathy. I rigorously consider how my actions affect others in everything I do, but I felt in my heart for the first time a moral equivilency with a drunk. Is this true? Are we capable of good and bad, right and wrong, or are we automaton acting out our program?