Collections

"Can I sit here?" he asks. The table is empty except for me and my book; I came to the Seattle waterfront entirely on accident, on a whim, as an inconvenient deviation from my set plans.
I'm here, why not?
I find a table overlooking the setting sun and Seattle sublimity. This is what the city is. This is its most intimate secret, known by millions, the cloud of red, blue, and yellow draping the Olympic mountains and obscuring anything within range. It's all I can see. The sun and its Pacific refractions on the tranquil faces of anyone who approaches the guardrail -- and thank God it's there. I'd have been pulled and brought deeper into its passionate solar kiss. I'd never have been kissed like that before.

"Can I sit here?" I pull away from the reflections on the water and the smooth gold gradients on the sides of buildings to look up.
"Sure."
He's a frail boy of around 20, speech thick with a foreign accent -- English.
"Where are you from?" I ask him, precariously [my mother had told me not to talk to strangers but the atmosphere of intriguing unfamiliarity is too much].
"England," he tells me, "Just arrived the other day." He says it simply; much like England wasn't across the ocean, but merely a street away.
"Oh yeah? What brings you to Seattle?" I make small talk, like I'm accustomed to from years of superficiality and surface suburbanism.
He smiles and chuckles to himself, a knowing, peaceful curve on his face, also veiled in violent red-orange.
He pauses and looks away.
"Well... this." -- A nod towards the waterfront.

And I understood; it was what had brought me here too, whether I knew it or not.
I smile too and we watch the mountaintops turn darker and the sun fall lower. We discuss music, as any small conversation starts and continues.
The Shins.
The Shook Ones.
The Blue Scholars and Gym Class Heroes -- Papercut Chronicles -- the gritty, raw beauty of underground independence from radio.
"It's the lyrics that make it," I say, and he nods emphatically, knowingly.
"For me too."

Every so often we would pause and watch the diminishment of the sun. We wouldn't say anything for a few moments, not for loss of words, but an onslaught of possibilities and adjectives that could label the moment at the table, punctuated with overstuffed bags and a burdensome understanding that it is passing too quickly.

We exchange names and shake hands. He -- Danny -- jumps onto the table and spreads his arms, stretches. The red bounces off his untidy hair, mirror-like and momentous -- if Seattle were reflected in a human being, Danny's outstretched figure and easy disposition would be the elusive white light.

He takes a picture with a camera materialized from a small pocket.
"Do you ever feel like the sun sets faster the closer it gets to the horizon? Like the Earth spins faster the more beautiful it becomes."

I nod. I know what he means.
"I don't think it spins faster. I think it's a trick of the mind; beauty is fleeting and beautiful things slip by faster. They're... elusive. The more you want to keep the moment in your eyes, your palm, your memory, the faster it passes through your eyelashes, your fingers, your neurons."

I pause for a minute and still open my eyes wider and clench my hands tighter. But it doesn't matter; Danny sighs and admits, "To try... it's all you can do to see as much beauty as you can."

He sits back down.
"How old are you, anyway?" he asks curiously.
"Nineteen in a few weeks."
He chuckles. "Hah... lucky."
"Lucky? Why? How old are you?"
"This'll be a fun game to play. How old do you think I am?"
I look at him, cock my head to the side.
"Twenty-one?"
"Nope."
"Younger? Older?"
"Older." He appears amused.
"Twenty... three?"
"Yes." The amusement turns to melancholy and for a quick moment I wonder why.
"And if I shave, I look like I'm fourteen." He grins and we laugh at the silliness of the notion; the moment is bittersweet and laughter is a welcome concept.
"So what do you want to do with your life?" I ask this broad question simply, quite childlike and naive, but he answers, "Something good," smiles, and looks at the sun, almost gone.
"That's our responsibility. I hope to leave the world a better place than I found it."

We talk about hopeful notions and idealistic fantasies; he takes off the woven hat he was wearing and ruffles his bright pink hair carelessly.

And I wonder, I question, how funny is it that an unfortunate distraction led to this unique stranger. It's funny how things work. Just that. Humorous.

The Earth spun faster and beauty grew in hues of red and the sun settled behind the mountains.

"I'm headed to Portland next, and San Francisco after that... I collect sunsets." Danny tells me, and I think, I believe it.

"Where are you headed next?" I ask, and he answers, "A little town called Lakewood, by Tacoma." He tells me of strangers' kindness in letting him sleep on their couches and we laugh at the sublime coincidence of locations and hometowns.

Eventually the sun lets go of its vibrancy and subdued grey creeps onto the horizon lethargically, and as all beautiful things, the moment and the conversation is over -- Danny has to catch a bus to Tacoma. He hugs me like an old friend and rationalizes, "Since I'll probably never see you again..."
"Don't say that. I travel a lot..."
The air thickens and we both know the acquaintance, the conversation, the universal truths and the ruffled pink hair are only refracted, analogous red rays.

As any beautiful thing, it leaves you.

It hides behind the mountain ridges and clings to surface clouds of memory, subdued colors and senses.
As with all remembrances, eventually it slips past your eyelashes and your fingers.

Can't hold on to a Seattle sunset; can't hold on to a perfect stranger.

Only thing that's left to do is collect.

What We Own

It was dark, late, and cold. I wanted not much more than to promptly get back to whichever apartment I'd have been living in and expend every last ounce of my energy studying the intricacies of conflict. To bury myself in literature and not say a word to anyone.

Waiting for the bus, I was impatient. A man passed and sat precariously next to me on the bench, shifting and shuffling his feet in perfect uncomfortableness and discontent. He eyed me slipping the pepper spray into my pocket.

"I'm jealous of your phone," he says, in a voice wavering with unassuredness; I know he wanted to address me as soon as I walked past; I have a certain magnetic effect on strangers, particularly troubled ones. Stability has no effect on me, and those with charming, quaint, stable lives have no interest in me. So be it?

And much like any strange conversation set off by randomness or a stray remark, I ended up discussing the logistics of mobile technology with this 30 year old man, homeless, possibly 'not all there' in his head.

My specialty? Yeah, guess so.

I ended up helping this man's friend load his belongings onto the 49 bus, significantly unsure of what I was doing, but curious to see where this uneasiness would take me. So what if he was homeless? I've always wanted to know a homeless man's story. What's behind those tattered hats and dumpster-scented jackets, traces of Marlboro in the pockets and tobacco between the teeth? There's a certain undeniable elegance and one day I've been intending to get to the bottom of it. So to speak.

We took our seats on the bus, pushed down rudely by acceleration. I moved to make room for this strange man, fingering the pepper spray in my pocket but feeling safer by the minute. It was okay. He wasn't going to hurt me. He was just looking for a conversation -- aren't we all?

We're all craving rhetorical flourishes and welcoming intonations.

Day-to-day small talk can't be enough, not even close; its (eloquence) doesn't sing the blues like genuine words do. Rueful, sorrowful. We're craving something real.

The man introduces himself as "Andy," and we watch the other man -- his friend (sufficiently further down the line of insanity) -- empty and organize the contents of his dumpster findings.
Treasures? Andy seemed to think so.
He pulled out a DVD and handed it to Andy.
"Do you know how to tell the difference between a blank and one with something on it?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, here. See how this blank one doesn't have the same ribbons and lines? It usually works."
"Oh..."

His friend -- the name escapes me -- continues rummaging in his findings, pulls out an unopened bottle of tequila, small, a souvenir. I laugh enthusiastically, having been gulping one much like it the night before, and the notion of alcohol unmarred in dumpsters tickled my cynicism. The two hobos laughed too.

"You should give that to her, for helping you with your stuff," Andy suggests, and the other man complies, grinning and handing me the bottle.

I thank him graciously for the gift, amused by the unexpected profoundness of the circumstances. So many things -- many of them perfectly functional, but no longer wanted.

Finders, keepers.

The friend continued showing us his findings, pulling out a pair of gloves and offering them to me. Internet security. A pair of shoes. A wrench. He offered to me every single one of these objects, his generosity preceding his obvious insanity.


It's intensely startling how those with the least to give are the ones most eager to do so.


"You can't judge things by whether they're wanted. Everyone, anyone, someone, somewhere, will want every particular thing. Nothing -- no one -- is ever unwanted."

I nod in agreement. "I try not to judge... you never know..." I mumble quietly, remembering the pepper spray.

Andy nods. I'm sure he knows.

We exchange phone numbers; his is on a scrap of Marlboro carton -- one mystery solved: so that is what happens to those Marlboros. Numbers of strangers written on them, for future reference and perpetual memories.

You learn something new from every rhetorical flourish. All these strangers, all these welcoming intonations.

Cupcakes and Dinosaurs

We realized we needed groceries at midnight last night. Safeway happens to be open until 2am, and the walk there is possibly the most worrisome of anywhere. I put pepper spray in my pocket and made sure the top was prominently visible -- intimidation factor. Ruffle my hair a little bit and furrow my brow; I've got it.

Our grocery trip consists of (more) tortillas and additions of pickles and cheap bran cereal. Set for the week. We stumbled through the store -- not as empty as expected. Apparently Safeway is tremendously popular at one in the morning. Who would have thought that Elizabeth and I aren't the only ones who don't sleep.

Everything about grocery shopping intimidates me. The logistics of food placement and the frustratingly true fact that what you want is always clear across the store. Aisle 14.

After deciding that ramen was too expensive, we proceeded to the checkout counter.

Behind the register was an apathetic Asian teenager, delightfully plump and fundamentally bored out of his mind, however not for long -- a curly-haired, lanky man of about 25 made the kid crack a smile. Cashier looks to me, next in line, and asks with a hint of amusement, "Would you like to meet my friend here? He draws dinosaurs."

The man, no more than 30 and wearing a grey sweater matched immaculately with black-rimmed glasses doesn't hesitate.

"Do you like cupcakes?" he asks me, not quite meeting my eyes but not fully diverging his, either. I couldn't help noticing that all three of his bagged groceries consisted solely of a rainbow of cupcakes stacked in plastic boxes.
"I do, actually," I reply, intrigued. The cashier isn't sure what to do and Elizabeth is turning beet red as she tries not to laugh in the whimsical man's face.

"So he tells me you draw dinosaurs."
"I do! You see, I have millions of dinosaurs... in my heart."
He lovingly, genuinely, places a hand to the left side of his chest and smiles.
"They live in my heart."
"Oh."

Dino Man promptly pulls out a sketchbook and flips it open to a penned illustration of what appears to be a stegosaurus.
"There's the ankylosaurus... he had to have orthodontic treatment." And true enough, unarguably, the "ankylosaurus" grins from the page with braces on his teeth.

He turns the pages emphatically.
"This one broke his leg and needed a cast... This one feeds on garden flowers..."

I laughed, but he was entirely serious, determined in showing me his collection of dinosaurs.
"I could give you one -- right now -- if you promise me it'll have a good home," he offers, a look of intent on his face.
"I promise."
"Which one would you like?"
"The one with the orthodontic treatment."

He tears out the page with the ankylosaurus, braces, differently-sized eyes, and triangle scales. "Here you go!"
"Why thank you."

Customers in line behind me are not sure of a proper reaction.

"You see, these dinosaurs are meant to make people happy in their hearts. When they run out of cupcakes."
And with this proclamation of profoundness, he gathers up his cupcakes and shuffles out of Safeway, satisfied with his deed and newly-bought arsenal of baked goods.


"He's got it all figured out," I tell Elizabeth later that night. "All you really need in life are cupcakes and dinosaurs."

And it's true. Here were philosophers decoding the elusive meaning of happiness; theorems, algorithms, formulas, brain scans, endorphin levels. Nonsense. What is science when you've found happiness in an ankylosaurus and a cupcake? It's the simple things. All I needed was a curly-haired man with boxes of cupcakes and a sketchbook of dinosaurs to show me this.