Tag: people watching

Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

Austin is gone. I haven’t seen him in days.

Austin showed up earlier in 2023. Just after spring, is what I think. A white man in his mid-twenties, he appeared to be in good health. About 6′ 2″, his hair was bright, shiny copper. His shoulders were broad but he was otherwise lean, but didn’t seem very musular. His clothes, usually green or gray, the sort worn for hiking, were in excellent condition. A large backpack rested on his shoulders and back.

My interactions with him were brief and superficial. I nodded to him once and said, “Hello.” He didn’t answer. I held the door open for him another time and was rewarded with, “Thank you.” Thank you is the most I ever heard him say to anyone.

Quickly becoming a daily regular, Austin usually requested water or ordered tea. His voice was low, with a soft tone. I rarely heard him order, but saw the tea or water. He never spoke to other patrons and sat alone, sipping his drink and listening to his phone through earphones. He didn’t have a regular seat, as I do. He sat wherever there was space, stripping off his huge backback and setting it on the floor beside him. People tried to give him money several times; he always rejected it.

His routine presence intrigued me. I like watching people and observing matters. Regulars and their habits are like a weird hobby for me, which I call ‘coffee shop spotting’. I have made several friends in this way. I’ve often included aspects of what I observe in my fiction writing.

Since we’re located close to the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT), I speculated that Austin was walking it and stopping in Ashland for a break. Many hikers pass through here in that way. They’re a normal, regular sight. Many stock up on supplies, rest and clean up, pick up mail, and receive packages. I figured Austin was doing these things.

But one week became two, and two weeks expanded into several months. Austin spent the entire summer in Ashland, walking Ashland Street with his pack on his back, stopping at the coffee shop, and then going back out and walking down the street again. I never saw him anywhere else. I don’t know where he slept. He always presented a neat and clean impression.

Now he’s gone. I never met him but I worry about him. He’d become part of my daily landscape. I asked the coffee shop workers if they knew any more about him; no. Several shared my concerns and had made many of the same questions. Austin never elaborated to him about any of his plans and situation. I know that local homeless individuals tried becoming his friend, but he rebuffed him, too.

I hope he’s okay, and that he’s not same killer or something on the run, and that whatever brought him spend the summer in Ashland has been resolved in his favor. Maybe there never was anything. Perhaps he was just taking time out from his life for a while.

It shouldn’t be important to me; other people have come and gone. It’s that Austin was a regular but an enigma. That made him a puzzle.

Now he’s gone but the puzzle remains, probably never to be solved. I hope he wasn’t injured or hurt. In my mind, I’ve sent him back to the world where he started. He’s resumed his life, and is back in college.

One can hope.

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Friday’s Wandering Thought

Tinted by smoke, the sun was a tangerine as noon rolled up. A short man walked through the warming, stifling day. Someone caught in middle age’s trenches, hard-edged in his slenderness, pale as a grub, bald as a newborn, walking fast. Unbelievable sight in this nasty air. White-grey ash collected on surfaces, dulling car polish, stinging nostrils with high magnitude burnt-wood flavors, usually encouraging tears, runny noses, sniffing, coughing.

But this guy walked down the sidewalk like the town’s proud owner, the only one out there, protected by sandals, a white tee-shirt, and light blue denim jeans. He also sucked on a cigarette and blew out his own smoke.

That might explain a lot.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

I enjoy people watching, especially at the coffee shop. Everyone has a story. It’s not always clear, so I’ll make one up for them, if they’re interesting enough.

Well, Austin is interesting enough. About six foot one, pale skin, moderate build, neat strawberry blond hair, he’s dressed for the outdoors and carries a full pack, a serious hiking and camping pack, white ear pods inserted. First time I saw him in April, I figured that he was another off the Pacific Crest Trail. It runs through this area and many hiking it will pop into Ashland. See the movie Wild or read the book by the same name, and you’ll see my town featured. That’s our plaza in the link I posted.

(Side note to all that: the city posted where they’d be filming the movie so we could avoid the area because of road closures and delays, and all that. You know what that did, right? Also, to have the right season depicted, the leaves had already departed the trees, so they made leaves, attached them to the naked branches, and then removed them after filming.)

Well, Austin remains here months later. I’ve wondered why. He comes into the coffee shop several times a day while I’m there. He’d usually just drink cold water. Sometimes hot tea. Rarely buys more. I’ve seen people offer him money, and he always turns it down. He only speaks to the baristas, which is how I know his name. He’s told me thank you as I was leaving and he was entering and I held the door. Thrice. That’s it.

I sense he wants to be alone, so I leave him alone. Also, I’m there to write, so I don’t want to strike up conversations. I initially thought he was just recharging his batteries. Then, waiting for something to arrive in the mail. Now I think he’s on the run, and hiding out in Ashlandia. The question is, why? Who is after him? What will happen when they find him?

Whatever, he’ll probably show up in a story sometime. That’s just how it goes when you cross a writer’s path.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thought

The exercise class has sixty to seventy members regularly attend. The instructor has been doing this for forty-five years and is much beloved. What’s interesting, though, are the class members known as ‘the doctors’ wives’. They only socialize with one another, sitting in a small group by themselves every time. Is this elitism? Old-fashioned snobbery? Are they all just very shy?

No, we know them, and they’re not shy. He has to wonder, though, what is it that they’re thinking.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thought

Sometimes when he was people watching, he wondered how many of them would be shit flingers if they were monkeys. Just one of many things he wondered, but there it was.

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Frieday’s Wandering Thought

He enjoyed people watching. Regulars were given backstories as their habits and details were observed and conversations they had with others were overhead.

One twentyish woman always wore a jean jacket lined with wool. An ordinary jacket except she wore it every day. This was during summer, during the day, during times when the temperature tiptoed up through ninety to one hundred degrees F. Yes, she was inside, where air conditioning sometimes made it feel like we huddled in shacks as we went ice fishing. But she never removed it, always wore it.

Imagination began fabricating reasons for her jacket. It could be fashion commitment. Perhaps a medical condition? Maybe the jacket provided her with extraordinary powers or protected her. There was also the possibility that the jacket gave her form. Removing the jacket would reveal that she had no body beneath it, exposing her as a neck with two hands and a lower body.

It was hard to say why she wore the jacket, but many possibilities existed.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

It was bright and sunny for a period. I think it was from sunrise at 5:51 this morning until 8:45 AM, about twenty minutes ago. Negligent gray clouds have bullied in, shutting out the sunshine.

Hi. Today is Saturday, May 14, 2022. Hope you survived Friday the 13th okay. I had no issues. Pleasant weather rules today. A mild rain threat hangs in the air but the temperature is 53 F and we’ll probably see 70 before the sun shuffles around the corner and out of sight at 8:24 this evening.

I was people-watching this week as I waited for others to complete their tasks and purchases. While I tagged some as a potential serial killer (you know how it is when you’re bored), I saw loneliness in a few people’s face as they walked along on their business. I wondered if I was projecting something from myself. I can and do deny that, because I don’t feel lonely, but the neurons popped the 1982 song by the Motels, “Only the Lonely (Can Play)”, into the mental music stream, where it still plays this morning. The song reminds me of their other big hit, “Suddenly Last Summer” from 1983. Both songs give me pause to think when I hear them. A sort of mournfulness pervades the tunes.

Well, on to the coffee. Stay positive and test negative, stay aware, and avoid complacency. Here’s the music. Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no8ZRIKm6UE
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Monday’s Theme Music

I like watching people, seeing where their eyes move, their non-verbal language, and how they interact with the world. The phone people — PP, or P2, the ones with attention glued to their phones as they walk along — demonstrate little expression or body language. It’s not a surprise; they’re usually totally invested in that little electronic device. They’re interacting with it. It changes when they’re on video, or actually speaking someone, and — of course! — when a selfie is being orchestrated.

As an aside rant, the P2 annoy me when they’re absorbed by their phone and walking. They expect everyone to move aside and look out for them. Sometimes, I’m an asshole, and I don’t move.

Today’s song was inspired by a woman walking toward me. She was quite the haughty person, swapping all with her eyes but avoiding eye contact with anyone. I do understand it more, now, why many women avoid contact that could be misconstrued with others. Many have horror stories about how their friendliness was misconstrued, leading to ugly encounters with men who thought the women were flirting with them.

This woman’s dark eyes struck a chord with lyrics from a past song, “Here comes the woman with the look in her eye.” Before she’d come within six feet, Michael Hutchence and INXS were streaming “Devil Inside” through me. Although this song came out in 1988, when I was stationed in Germany, I’d heard INXS in the early eighties while on assignment at Kadena AB on Okinawa. That’s because I knew some Australian special forces members there. They knew of INXS’ music and introduced them to me. So INXS is forever associated with Okinawa in my mind.

Sad day when I heard that Hutchence had killed himself, thirty-seven years old. He was younger than me by four years, and it seemed astonishing that such a talented, young, and successful person could kill themselves.

I’ve learned a lot since then.

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