September 14th, 2006 - 2:44 pm
» other lives
I spent over an hour walking around Lake Calhoun on Tuesday. It was lovely, the sun setting over the water, some last pre-fall warmth, lots of people but everything orderly, polite. I only saw one other person with an ‘I Voted’ sticker, though, which was a little depressing. (Though I have to admit I forgot to check the results until today. But I’m pleased. I feel a little bad for my old next-door-neighbor’s failed bid for sherrif, but all apart from any knowledge of the issues or other candidates.)
I love people-watching. I love the different ways people move. There are so many ways to run. Some people shuffle along, looking like they’re ready to die, moving as little as possible. Some people are big movers, all knee-hinging, high-kicking. I love looking at people’s shoes, the ones that are worn funny. People with unusual strides. The way people carry tension in their shoulders or their hips, their hands. I love people who look like their pets: lean runners with greyhounds, a curly-haired woman with a big fluffy poodle, the bulldog puffing away next to a thick-shouldered paunchy-bellied suburban dad. For a while I walked behind a little boy going absolutely crazy to some internal tune, his walk a constant flailing of limbs as his mother strolled alongside, laughing and encouraging.
I love biking the lake too, the rhythm of it, the speed and wind and resistance, but I miss a lot of the details. I just don’t notice as much about fellow bikers, passing them or being passed relatively quickly. Watching instead for the speed of their spinning, looking for posture and technique. Maybe there’s a better way of walking but it’s not something I ever consider any more.
I now definitely know the afternoon drive-up teller at my usual work-bank. When I can I use the first lane because it’s fastest; there’s a good view in (and out) and our smiles lately have been those of recognition, not blind politeness. Yesterday he mentioned I didn’t have my sunglasses (which I often do, but hell if I know where they’ve gotten off to now). I have this crazy want to — I don’t know. Have the start of some improbable movie with him. Not a buddy comedy because that’s not my thing but we’d run into each other somewhere and spontaneously become best friends who wind up the next day on an oceanliner in Alaska where, dodging danger and certain death at every turn, we foil a group of murderous art thieves, bringing them to long-overdue justice and ourselves to high tea with British royalty. He’d be the sort of person who eats scones indelicately but unselfconsciously, and who doesn’t care between jelly and jam.
Allison said: September 14th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Sometimes, when I’m riding in a car, I look at all the people in all the cars around me, and wonder. Who they are, where they’re going, how there can be so many people who have these complete entire lives but who I’ll never really meet.
rachel! said: September 15th, 2006 at 9:42 am
I wonder about people in grocery stores a lot too. Especially older people for some reason, like the woman last week who asked me about the lemongrass I’d just put in my basket. She said her daughter loved to cook and made all sorts of unusual things, but she lived somewhere else. And I wondered how often they see each other, and what sorts of things the daughter might cook for her mother, and if they talk on the phone a lot, and if it’s often about food.
One of the things that fascinates me most is the thought of other people’s houses. I don’t know why. I wonder all the time what the houses of my coworkers might look like.