Live ASAP

I bet if I asked you, dearest reader, how you spend your time while waiting for a flight at the airport you’d forget to tell me the truth. Now, whether we are friends or not is beside the point because I know that you, like myself and virtually everyone else capable of entering those automatic doors of the airport, indulge in staring at people. Before an hour has expired, your delayed flight is ready to board, and Tim Horton’s has run out of whole wheat bread, you will have done a complete 360 analysis of your surroundings, or rather, the people present in your surroundings. Now, I’m not sure how you do it. There are various ways, of course, I’ve noticed people attempt to be unassuming behind ‘The Globe and Mail’, on way to the bathroom and/or bubble gum machines, and even in conversation with baristas. I’ve noticed this through the years and I’ve come to presently conclude that we’re all guilty of it. I mean, we’re all guilty of staring at people while at the airport. Some people consider this whole…thing, poetic. One question penetrates the minds of us all while stalling for boarding time: “Who are you? Where are you going? Why?” Okay, so maybe that’s three questions and math was never my favorite, but ultimately, we want to know the stories of the people around us, the “who are you”? When we ask ourselves, individually, this particular question we can’t even completely answer it. I don’t know anyone who can, really. Why bother, for like Bob Dylan once said “All I can do is be myself, whoever that is”. There is no real answer. But some questions, maybe the important ones, we ask knowing there is no real answer. The wondrous “why’s”. Perhaps the curiosity in someone else allows one, unconsciously, to manifest ideas of himself or herself.

This sort of indulgence in quiet curiosity can become habit. A simple fix for the imagination. I’m addicted. It’s beyond the airport for me and onto the streets.

After spending my morning (yesterday’s morning, at work) reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone, I left at noon to meet my aunt for lunch. The clouds had bullied their way through blue and hovered just above the downtown streets. When it rains it pours. And it did. In white high heels and a pink petticoat I ran several blocks down 7^th Avenue in the pouring rain. On the corner of 4^th Street I caught something, or rather someone that made me slow my pace and nearly skid on high heels. Beside a rusty pub on the corner of 4^th street there is a men’s clothing store. I can’t recall the name of it but it is very upper class. There are three suits displayed in the window with uncoiled ties and shiny shoes. Very corporate. Very polished wood. Ironically, the outdoor speakers of the store was playing Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’. If I were rich, I’d take the scenario as a sign that I needed a closet make-over. Mind you, I’d have to be a man in that case. Sitting on the ledge of the display window was a homeless man. His skin tone and facial features suggested he was Puerto Rican. He had strong cheek bones and sat with water dripping on his weathered red baseball cap. A buggy containing all of his belongings was parked close beside him. His arms were folded as were his legs and he just stared at the items displayed behind the glass. At that particular moment I was fascinated only by what this person was potentially thinking. He was really evaluating the dark blue pin-stripped suit. I wondered if he was thinking about the last time he wore a suit, or if he had at all, or what he’d do if he could afford one. He didn’t seem to have the disposition of wanting to steal it. ‘Money’ was blaring from the speakers.

I was running late and I had another three blocks to go in the pouring rain.

One latte, a warm conversation, and slice of carrot cake later, I accepted the wrath of the gods and walked several blocks back to work in the pouring rain. He was still there on 4th Street. I knew I had to write about him, remember him somehow.

I came into work dripping wet, stockings soaked and make-up free. All around me were blue suits. I tended to my receptionist desk, a temporary desk, and opened my e-mail account here. It’s not actually my own quite yet nor will it ever be, mind you. I was still being addressed in these e-mails as Sara, the previous receptionist. The particular floor I work on only has twenty five employees. I’ve met every single one of them and I have introduced myself and wished them a good morning for the past two weeks. I’m still Sara. I’m neither insulted nor hurt but this example epitomizes the pace of my current work place. I order exotic fruit for this particular group of people and half of it is thrown out. I ordered pens because they were requested. When they were delivered they were not good enough. I thought a pen was a pen. And exotic fruit was exotic. When I am at work my life ambition is to comfort the directors of this company by making them fresh coffee three times a day and fulfill any other sort of request. I’m capable, sure. But it’s a waste of coffee. Easily. One to three cups per brew. All that wasted coffee could warm somebody on the corner of the building’s street or at least make somebody feel like talking. I don’t think anyone in my work place actually needs coffee. The assistants alone make coffee nervous. Personal conversations here are kept to a minimal. How’s the weather, how’s your morning, that’s good. I’m not looking down on the corporate life. It’s admirable in ways. My current co-workers work extremely hard. They don’t punch out at five. Their work carries on with them nearly twenty four hours a day. But I wouldn’t lust for a blue suit nor an assistant or a fresh cup of coffee every two hours. It’s threatening, I think. Everything is at the touch of technology. Everything is accessible, everything is based on consumerism, and everything is “ASAP”. I wondered if he knew that. Mr.Display window, that is. I wish I knew what he was thinking.

Lusting for a suit could leave you lusting for life. I know it can. And lusting for life could lead you anywhere- even undesirable places like the corner of 4th Street. While extreme ways of living exist, they can be conquered by ambition of living a quality life. Quality does not mean money nor does it mean having no money.

Balance, I suppose, is quality. I wonder how we make transitions in our life without realizing it or if we do realize it, how we can accept transitions that aren’t necessarily positive or fringe upon our quality of life. I wonder how some people can work more than twelve hours a day or say someone else’s name twenty times more than they say their own name. I wonder how some people end up on the streets, just as capable as you and I. I wonder a lot things. I think today really helped me to access what quality of life means. It’s not working 15 hours a day and it’s not calling the corner of 4th Street a home, either. At least not in my opinion. Evaluating what we want and how we want to attain it in life is something that we may have to remind ourselves on a daily basis or from time to time. Perhaps this is what this entry is. A reminder.