when you're strange..........

What is it about the allure of strangers? People you see in the street. Faces from the bus or around work. Neighbours, shopkeepers, folks smoking around bends, down alleyways, under fire escape ladders, the far, far corner of the carpark (....but not the people who smoke in garden beds. Have you seen these people?)

There's a certain kind of stranger that is particularly alluring. They're mysteriously quiet, seemingly stoic, as though their personal story is admirably contained or withheld, although not so far or so sad as repressed. They may very well carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and yet they walk on from Here to There with resolve - in shoes you hope are orthopedically kind - their eyes blazing with thought, an agenda, or a fictional conversation, and yet still perceptively roaming and hoping to connect with others, or their window reflection.

You catch glimpses of their inner world as they make their foot journey. It's more than mere steps: their style of gait, their pace, their posture, their mode up hills, their navigation around puddles, broken bottles and small straying children. Some strangers get away with hats you could only dream of wearing. Some strangers wear very apt, understated satchel bags. Some carry nothing. These ones must really live on the edge. They seem strong, maybe even strong enough to take on your worries and woes, too.

If you happen to lock eyes with one of these strangers, even briefly, perhaps repeatedly over time, you might be slightly overcome with wonder, inquisition, or attraction. You're no stalker or anything. Your face is appropriately stern-looking on the street, and you decidedly ignore them some days. You're quiet and respectful and burdened (by an overstuffed, yet stylish backpack, or possibly horrible romantic history) and they see that, too. This is how Stranger Lure begins. It contracts both you and the stranger, not in an extreme case of love or lust, but somewhere in between. No one acts on it or asks names (for a long while, you can only beg your Omniscient Creator). It's a game of cat-and-mouse. A leggy dance. An unspoken agreement that you would be lovers in an alternate timeline. Not in this life, because that would surely ruin. It isn't because you're both way too shy and damaged to give the romance a shot. More that you're both afraid of the underwhelming acquaintance you'll share the moment one of you begins to fatefully utter "...By the way, I'm [a very token name]."

You thought he'd be smarter, a little more cultured. He hoped you'd be a traveller, more adventurous -- fearless. Conversations commonly destroy Stranger Lure. We prefer the sight of bodies, souls, and minds unknown.

It's the lone girl with flowers in her hair, walking the main drag night after night with only her iPod for company (an audio book on play, possibly some Jeff Buckley).

Or, it's the broad-shouldered man, crew cut and chef pants, no bag, no music, stomping home to a pantry presumably empty and a refrigerator full of craft beer.

It's the woman with retro glasses smiling to herself in a cafe window, scribbling peacefully in her notebook. An honest smile for you would pain her to her anxious core. She just keeps her eyes down and nurses that tea for hours.

It's the young tattooed guy, smoking drags, and wandering around with his trusted, doe-eyed Kelpie. Both of them lean. The feeling of a starving social life seems to make more sense when it goes with a starving belly.

It's the career girl, body wrapped like a pretzel, on the same treadmill, at the same unholy hour of the morning, five days a week. Eyes on the prize. Running like her life depends on it.

Each of them has a quiet beauty and a dignity in their solitude, that reassures you. You're both alone. That's all you need to know. Say nothing. Don't even stare for too long. Or else, the illusion crumbles.

The woman with the glasses writing in the cafe window, without warning, breaks her elegant form to gulp her glass of water and hold it in her mouth like a child imitating a blowfish or a chimpanzee. Then she gets pen on her face and starts singing along to "Build Me Up Buttercup" that's on play. She makes faces at an adorably-overalled toddler, hoping to make their face light up, but whose reaction is more on the scared, tearful side. Her cheeks flush and she grimaces apologetically - not for the parents having to quell and shush a disturbed little creature - but for herself, and her poor affinity with humans, small or big. She sinks in her chair. And then you discover that this lonesome, well-postured stranger with lovely lips isn't actually cool. She's not flawed in all the wistful ways you supposed for so many months.

She doesn't get you. She probably doesn't want to. She doesn't even get herself. The person wearing your clothes lures her, but you're really not that cool either. That is the illusion. And that is the very condition of Stranger Lure. If you find yourself falling for a certain kind of stranger, best to go away and write some nonsense, creative and therapeutic. You can do it by yourself, killing an afternoon, and keeping you off the street most importantly. Away from eyes. Away from the lure. A way to feel better about being alone.

Memories of Mandy

Going back through one of my writing journals, I discovered a whole page of scrawl that was totally unfamiliar to me. It was about a character named Mandy. I do not name characters Mandy. This "Mandy" character was involved in "everyday situations" and typically "rolled around on the floor". I then placed Mandy and her trademark floor-rolling into an international espionage setting – which I noted would be "extra amusing". Today, this strikes me as little more than odd. No wonder I get the faces I get sometimes. Are my attempts at humour ever actually as clever as I imagine? Hindsight does wonders. Shameful wonders. I am also struck by the peculiarity that Mandy is "integral" to the scene, she is the "height of its humorous tones", and yet she would "most effectively be placed in the background of shots"....

Mandy. Mandarin. 

Da'doy.

Now this joke makes sense. Foolish-yet-comprehensible sense. See it now: a mandarin in a CIA classified ops briefing, on the table, corner of shot, as the no-nonsense Commander-in-chief prattles off war criminal histories, disgraced double agents, assassination plans, the kind of bait-and-switch heists that might end in success, arsenic, or nuclear retaliation.  And then his mandarin rolls off the table, or something, and he fumbles over his toes to catch it.

Now this joke is actually slightly amusing. In its execution, more or less.

I do not name characters Mandy, and I didn't. But I certainly don’t call a Mandarin a “Mandy”. 

Where did this voice come from? Social ties with country bumpkins? Infectious TV jingles?

....I can sense an old memory rising to the surface. An acquaintance I don't think about too often these days, and that brief embarrassing episode shelved away.

At the time of recording this entry, I had developed some uncertainty and insecurity about the pronunciation of the citrus fruit Mandarin (say: “reen”) which, I believed, is a distinct entity from the language Mandarin (say: "rin").

I did not know the truth. I did not know about the Mandarin Orange.

When this friend told me, I froze for a minute. Then it was as though a bridge was suddenly built in my mind, and the world seemed a simpler, smarter place to be in. Evidently, this recent humiliation had been transferred to a fear of writing the word on the page.

Mandarins seem to feature prominently in my life. Just last night, I dreamt that I mistakenly stole one, believing it to be my orange. And this was before reading and deciphering my old notebook entry...

For more fruit dreams and veggie nightmares, check out my Visions and Ramblings of My Unconscious wordpress journal or ask me about my Vitamin C deficiency paranoia on the street!