I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more.
I was in a bakery across from Leicester Square and on the overhead instead of music the dialogue from The Breakfast Club was playing. I didn’t notice at first and it took something in the background but just conscious enough to distract from the newspaper cartoons I had spread out in front of me before I realised that I was whispering the lines a fraction of a second before they sounded out. I wasn’t sure why anyone would decide to have this echoing through their entire shop until my eyes floated over the room and I could pick out the people who were laughing at the unconscious theatrics playing above all our heads. Is it any surprise I took up the show? There was little I could do to help it but soon enough I was running the dialogue alongside seen and seen again gestures, complete with facial expressions in a one man show of questionable success. It had me and the two women that left when I did shaking our heads and shaking with laughter and in that moment I realised why anyone might have the dialogue of a simple yet expert film playing through their place of business. It makes people smile and laugh and for a simple moment forget everything except those two things.
Have you ever been on the tube or the bus or even a lone walker in a crowd of many and felt someone’s gaze plaguing you? Not a dangerous gaze and not one that has you wanting to cry but that look of curiosity which makes you wonder if you have a pen mark stretching from one cheek to the other or some foreign appendage you didn’t leave the house with but is suddenly carried with you. I am that gazer and I was caught this evening on the way back home. I try not to stare because etiquette says that’s rude, except that etiquette also tells us “Excuse me, but what is the design of your tattoo?” and “The cover of your book has been ripped off, would you mind telling me what you’re reading?” are also rude questions to ask. And so I stare. I don’t watch things I think are weird or uncommon or outside some norm, I just watch whatever happens to hold my hair. Can I help it if that happens to be a girl with purple hair or a man with tiger stripe tattoos? I people watch, I also have a tendency to forget not all people like to be watched. One day I’ll learn to bring a newspaper around with me and just hold it over my face so that I can hide the rest of the world from myself.
I try to go out every day and I’m not always successful nor do I wake up every morning wanting to go out but I try to leave these 4 sturdy walls at least once a day. In an extension of that philosophy I force myself to talk to 3 strangers every day that I’m out. Plants and animals don’t count but there’s a fairly good chance that if you’re out with your absolutely beautiful or interesting or peculiar pet that I’m going to talk to you and it. My train of thought is that if I talk to 3 new people every day that, before I die, I should have spoken to everyone in London.
I have quickly recognised how deadly these journals can be. The babble and ramble and illegible twist of thoughts as well as the English language has already been forced to a stop on half a dozen different occasions. Just because I could go on and on and on about absolutely nothing or the colour of a streak of light across the sky or how the tires sound different on wet pavement doesn’t mean anyone wants to be subjected to that. Beware, Samantha can talk if you let her.
Have you ever been on the tube or the bus or even a lone walker in a crowd of many and felt someone’s gaze plaguing you? Not a dangerous gaze and not one that has you wanting to cry but that look of curiosity which makes you wonder if you have a pen mark stretching from one cheek to the other or some foreign appendage you didn’t leave the house with but is suddenly carried with you. I am that gazer and I was caught this evening on the way back home. I try not to stare because etiquette says that’s rude, except that etiquette also tells us “Excuse me, but what is the design of your tattoo?” and “The cover of your book has been ripped off, would you mind telling me what you’re reading?” are also rude questions to ask. And so I stare. I don’t watch things I think are weird or uncommon or outside some norm, I just watch whatever happens to hold my hair. Can I help it if that happens to be a girl with purple hair or a man with tiger stripe tattoos? I people watch, I also have a tendency to forget not all people like to be watched. One day I’ll learn to bring a newspaper around with me and just hold it over my face so that I can hide the rest of the world from myself.
I try to go out every day and I’m not always successful nor do I wake up every morning wanting to go out but I try to leave these 4 sturdy walls at least once a day. In an extension of that philosophy I force myself to talk to 3 strangers every day that I’m out. Plants and animals don’t count but there’s a fairly good chance that if you’re out with your absolutely beautiful or interesting or peculiar pet that I’m going to talk to you and it. My train of thought is that if I talk to 3 new people every day that, before I die, I should have spoken to everyone in London.
I have quickly recognised how deadly these journals can be. The babble and ramble and illegible twist of thoughts as well as the English language has already been forced to a stop on half a dozen different occasions. Just because I could go on and on and on about absolutely nothing or the colour of a streak of light across the sky or how the tires sound different on wet pavement doesn’t mean anyone wants to be subjected to that. Beware, Samantha can talk if you let her.