keep it loose

There are so many people.

You know that, right?  It's kind of like the word table.  Or leave.  Normal, everyday words.  Until you say them.  Over and over again.

Anything you think on too long is capable of becoming strange.  

There are so many people.

And you don't know most of them.  But they're there.  They're real.  One of them just stubbed their toe and felt the sharp pain of it.  One was just born -- a small person with a heart that's beating.  One just did something brand new -- or laughed for the first time in six years.  Someone just lost their virginity.  And someone just went to jail.

There are so many people.

I woke up this morning and pulled myself out of bed.  I am not old.  But sometimes my body feels that way.  It's been beaten up.  It has some genetic disadvantages.  I was born with some hurdles to jump.  And 23 years later, I'm just now jumping them.  

But I went to the gym.  To circulate the pain.  Get the apathy moving through my bloodstream so it doesn't get stuck somewhere.  Keep it moving.  

Keep it loose.  

Keep it tight.

I was on my way to breakfast before the thought struck me.  Like stepping out onto a freshly cut lawn and realizing how strange grass is.  (It is.  Think about it.  Grass is weird.)

So, with a book in hand, I went to my favorite bakery.  With every intention of being alone.  In the middle of all those people.  We who do life together.  Without speaking.  And only occasionally nodding at one another.  

Why do I go somewhere public to be alone?  Perhaps it is the coffee.  Or the comfort of the white noise -- the cash register and the opening doors and the children.  

But then I got there.  And I could barely focus on the pages of my novel for all the people around me.


This is why I go there.

So many people.

There's a woman who is there as often as I am.  She doesn't wear a wedding ring.  And no matter how warm it is outside she's always wearing wool socks.  She eats an everything bagel and reads the paper.  I've never seen her smile.  But she's always there.

I wonder if she lives in an empty house.  If maybe home isn't so much home as this bakery with high ceilings and loud voices.  If so, she's kind of like me.  I am like this woman.  I find comfort then, in the likeness.  In the consistency of her routine, I am at home.

She is one of the people.

I don't know her.  And yet, I wonder silently, if maybe I know as much about her as anyone else does.  The woman with the everything bagel and the glasses perched on her nose.

There are so many people...

Who are living stories I don't know. Who have things to say I don't hear.  Who are saying words I don't understand and going places I've never been.  It's so easy to forget you are not the only one.  When pain or love or anxiety are so real, it's easy to forget you are just one.  One person.  

Valuable.  Important.

But just one.

I am struck by this.  

This involvement in such a big story.

And the involuntary participation in smaller ones.

What it means when you are dragged by your heels into a story you don't want to tell.  When someone reaches out and begins to write on you and your life without your permission.  Your heart is stolen.  Or the victim of a drive-by.  Just your existence is the cause of another's pain.  Or joy.  

You intervene.  Intercede.  Avoid.  

There are so many people.

Living so many separate, intertwined lives.  

Anything you think on too long is capable of becoming strange.  

These lives we lead are no exception.  It becomes all too apparent, overwhelmingly evident, as you catch the breath of another.  Brush up against someone else.  Interlace fingers or lock eyes from across the room.

You are not the only one.