I’ve made a pomise not to fall for strangers. However, it is harder than it seems.
Sometimes I sit and stare out cafe windows, looking intently at handsome strangers with their boyfriends by their side spinning the combination locks on their bicycles or linen-clad gentlemen, in cream colored panama hats turning the postcard rack at souviner shops, looking for just the right city image to send home.
I love to think about these people. Strangers. People, who I have never met nor seen prior, but am instantly attacted to from a far and for no reason other than from where I am sitting they look interestingly beautiful and mysterious.
Strangers are called just that for a reason, they are strange because I don’t know them and they don’t know me. They are strangers and I am apparently a creeper.
The musings I do in my mind when I see someone I don’t know, but who is attractive to me from a block distance and a window pane away are quite possibly the most romantic and half-baked daydeams I could possibly have. I like to map out their fictitious comings and their goings and what they had for lunch. I like to think about what our babies would look like and how messy the divorce would be.
When strangers manifest themselves into odd, poetic and thought-provoking stories, but can also assume such immediate significance, I begin to doubt their authenticity in this world. Either, I chose to remain doubtful, not approach them and continue the dream or pop the bubble with a “hello”.
Like most, I have dreamt about strangers I have casually met. They appear out of nowwhere and within my subconcious I feel like I know them.
The gent I met last week who showed me his tattoo of Trent Reznor outside a book store, then went on to tell me that if my heart hurt and if I miss my lover, not to fret: just live in my head and he’ll always be there. This man made it into a dream or at least his sense of wisdom did; I don’t remember his role. He was probably chewing gum or something inconsequential. Ha! Irony. Because in real life, he affected my day and every day henceforth.
I once gained a boyfriend because of a dream. He was in my sleepy mind on Wednesday and in front of my waking body Friday. I had never spoken to him before, but one day he just appeared and I said, “we ought to get to know each other”. And so we did. Our relationship took on a form that was smokey and fluid and had a life of its own.
We had very little in common while awake, but under the darkness of the sheets and from a strangers’ distance we were mysterious to one another and exotic and in love. The relationship was like sexy voyeurism, where you know that someone is watching you, but you are fine with it; the kind of thrill that makes your palms sweat and the saliva in your mouth thicken.
The beginning was enough in itself to stand certain tests of time.
So, I don’t really have a good way to wrap this post up. I don’t even know if I am trying to make a point here…….. maybe don’t be afraid to talk to strangers? Or maybe you should. Try falling in love with stranger from a far, who knows where it could take you. The excitement will be stronger than the hesitation.
All photos by Silvio Tanaka