Hello Stranger

Hi there. We know each other. Slightly. I pass you sometimes at a bus stop, in the bus, in the streets, at work, online, at a party, at a movie, everywhere. Wish I had the time to know you better. You feel like someone interesting.

There is tiredness and pain in your eyes. They are older than their age. I like older eyes. With beautiful lines on the outer corners fanning out. The lines of someone who has lived through pain, and bounced back to smile again. I like people who have seen the ugly side of life and survived to tell the tale.

But I am always fighting a losing battle with time. I am just another faceless victim, with my back to a corner, arms spread out against each side and eyes staring wide in horror as time slowly crushes out my measly existence.

When I think I want to know you, I think of all the people who have been there for me over the years, who deserve more of my time, by every right. But they’re not here, you see, so while the shallow ebbs of my surface try to cover more ground with you, just keeping me afloat, the murky depths of my mind are slowly sucking me into the cesspool of guilt. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I want to just be.

I probably shouldn’t be thinking so much anyway. But what can I say, I do. I think, its a reflex, actually more like ten thousand reflexes. Sometimes I feel like Arnie in Terminator 2, with a red screen in front of my eyes, processing data at high speed about every single thing I see, seeking, weighing, analyzing, planning, comparing, concluding, that reacting is one thing I completely forget to do.

There’s red everywhere when I close my eyes. Reddish-orange. My yoga master told us that when we close our eyes, blue was for peace, orange for anger. Even when I don’t feel consciously angry, its there, when I close my eyes. Red-Orange. It drives me crazy, not knowing why or how. I am all about knowing. I feel like I must be emanating lightning in a short circuit from the top of my head, like a cartoon.

I would love to just react to you, just be. It’s the most difficult thing in the world for me. Would love to speak to you. Someday. Just stop you as we sail past in circles, and demand, tell me your dreams. No, more like, tell me your nightmares. Its not for my ghoulish enjoyment of your misfortunes. You must believe that! But to me, misfortunes always bring out the best in us, the noblest, the weakest, the rawest. I want to know all of that. What makes you who you are. And how you tell it.

I wish you would show me some playgrounds where you were kicked, some heights where you were pushed, some scars that refused to fade, some wars that just couldn’t wait, any more, anything…I could probably make some guesses, but I want your story, the world, according to you.

Do you cry over it still, do you tell it like it doesn’t matter anymore, tell it like a joke, are you putting on an “I’m okay, it was a long time ago” act? All of these are our typical reactions when we are asked to tell our sad tales. There is no right or wrong in it. There is only, which type are you? Will you tell me?

Probably not, I have no skill as a confidante, no comforting manner, no sympathetic noises. I regret it keenly, especially when I meet someone like you, someone I want to know. If only I were less stony, if only I was more understanding, if only I had more time, to draw you out, to paint you as you in all your colours...

Aloha, stranger, if only…

Got to be good looking cause you’re so hard to see
Come together, right now, over me
- Beatles