— छह हज़ार इकतीस —
I had a new and different experience right after leaving work last night.
If I am walking home, or to wherever I am going to next, I typically exit the back door of our office, which opens to the elevator bank for getting down to the parking garages. Beyond that is the main Rainier Square Tower lobby entrance, which opens onto Union Street. I went out those revolving doors, as I typically do, and as soon as I was just about to the crosswalk at 5th Avenue, a guy was trying to get my attention. He may have even said "Excuse me" a couple of times.
He was leaning against the corner of the building, and there was no question he could not walk unassisted. I couldn't tell you what the specific condition he had was, but he was clearly physically disabled. His body joints turned at slightly unnaturual angles, and although he could stand, it was pretty obvious he would have fallen over had he tried to walk unassisted.
I'll admit that, for a split second, before I fully registered what his situation was, my brain was fully ready to say "Sorry!" before I just walked on, as though he were just another panhandler. But, I did stop, and he asked if I could help him walk over to the small bus that was parked on the corner. Really it was just a matter of crossing the sidewalk to it; the bus was also parked right there on the corner.
I said, "Okay," and walked up to him to hold my arm out. He took my arm and we walked carefully over to the bus. He said something like, "Okay, thank you" when he got to the door. "Okay, thank you," he said. Not knowing if he'd need help up the three steps to the bus, I said, "You're all right?" He said yes and I went on my way.
I never did look inside to see if a driver was in there. If they weren't in there, where were they? On a bathroom break? If they
were in there, why the fuck didn't they come out to assist this guy?
This all lasted maybe two minutes, it was very quick. I have no idea how long it would have taken for the guy to find someone else to help him, but maybe not that long. I had a sudden memory of someone else helping him walk on that same sidewalk not that long ago; I figured it was someone he know. But now I wonder, does this guy regularly just ask total strangers to help him cross the sidewalk? What must it be like to have that kind of trust in strangers?
This whole thing has stayed with me because of that idea, rather than because I personally made the choice to stop and help him. I was kind of amazed that he would just ask some rando passing by to help him. But, there's a lot of context I'm missing. Maybe it's a deliberate choice he's making: let me ask strangers for assistance. Conversely, maybe he's in a situation where he has no other choice at all. Who knows?
Laney later theorized that, for whatever reason, he just read me as a safe person. She even said maybe the
dangling cat earrings I was wearing helped: no one wearing earrings like that would be dangerous! That was half-facetious, of course. Realistically, anyone can be dangerous. But also, I suppose, anyone can be safe. Life is all about risk management. I'm just stuck on how hard it is to imagine myself having that kind of trust in his position, but, I haven't lived his life, have I? Nor has he lived mine, in which I've had myriad expriences conditioning me to be more reticent to trust.
Whatever the reason, I left the experience feeling pretty good about myself. Not so much that I had done a "good deed," but that he had chosen me to do it.
— छह हज़ार इकतीस —
— छह हज़ार इकतीस —
I was on my way to meet Laney, actually, when that happened; we met at Monorail Espresso, with a plan to take our hot drinks into the newly opened Barnes & Noble on 6th & Pike. I thought it was in the old Nike Store space, but that's not where it was; it's in the old North Face store space. This is more than six years after their much larger store over at Pacific Place, on the corner of 7th and Pine, closed—that happened in January 2020, after being in business there since the entire Pacific Place mall first opened in 1998.
For a while Laney and I thought we might do a "BYOB Happy Hour" at a coffee shop in the bookstore, but there isn't one in this new space. Upon further reflection, I don't think there was one at the Pacific Place store either. I was confusing that with the Borders Bookstore that was open on 4th Avenue between 1994 and 2011. That one had a coffee shop in it. But, no matter: Laney suggested we get drinks at Monorail Espresso, which is right down Pike on the same block as the new Barnes & Noble location, and take those into the bookstore.
I got to Monorail Espresso right at 4:35 as agreed, and Laney wasn't there yet. I ordered my hot chocolate while I waited—Monorail Espresso is just a tiny shop kind of in the wall, with a few tables set up on the sidewalk outside—and I began to get concerned by about 4:40. This would be nothing for most people, but Laney is usually super punctual. So I texted her at 4:40:
Are you on your way? And that was when we found out she had misremembered the street location as Pine and not Pike, so for several minutes she had been a block away, unable to find Barnes & Noble and wondering if Monorail Espresso had closed. Ha!
So, she walked the block over to me, and all was good again. She got a mocha in her tumbler bottle. My hot chocolate was in a standard paper cup, but I did get a lid for it. We then walked over to Barnes & Noble and, although the space is definitively smaller than the old one was, we found it to be very well laid out and very broadly stocked.
We decided to wait until the end for exploring the store, though, so we went straight downstairs to look for chairs to sit in. When I was last in there, there were only two sections with two chairs side by side, and they were in use when we got down there. But! Then we found a new little book-alcove with two empty seats, and we must have sat there, sipping on our drinks and catching up, for the next hour or so. We were in the Fiction section and surrounded by famous novels, a ton of which Laney had read; she commented on several. Right behind us was a copy of Cormack McCarthy's
The Road, the last book to literally keep me up at night (that was like 20 years ago, mind you; I'm so much more jaded about the world now that I'm not sure it could manage to scare me the same way). Near us was a table of novels identified as "Dystopian Fiction," and I was like, "That's my jam. That's my table!" It even included copies of Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World, my all-time favorite novel and the only one I have read five times.
We chatted while other people came into our little section and browsed the books. I wonder how their sales actually are; they seem to have a pretty steady stream of people coming through, and I'm delighted to have a bookstore in the Downtown neighborhood again. But, probably lots of people come in and leave without buying anything. Indeed, that's exactly what Laney and I did, and we spent at least ninety minutes in there. (We hung out for a solid two.)
We rode the bus back up the hill together, and then I had a couple of hours at home alone while Shobhit was at a SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local board meeting. I kind of just farted around, really. I had some leftover lasagna from what Shobhit had made for Action Movie Night last Wednesday; there was maybe one portion left after I had mine.
Oh, I did do one productive thing in that time: I looked up our flight bookings on Iceland Air for when we go to Amsterdam this summer, and I entered our passport and other contact information. I was able to do this now that
my passport has been renewed and arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. I have a new passport number, so I was able to plug that in. Unfortunately, we also learned recently that there's no need to enter a preference for a vegetarian meal, as there are no meals included in our flights! But whatever, we'll just bring food; we do that all the time, no biggie.
I do still need to coordinate with Gabriel about this weekend on Lummi Island, though.
Anyway, Shobhit looked over the booking page at Iceland Air, was satisfied by the lack of bag fees also being confirmed, and then we watched Sunday's episode of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which was all about companies that take advantage of vulnerable people by purchasing their structured settlements.
— छह हज़ार इकतीस —
[posted 12:30pm]
