Thursday, 4/10/03: Caged Eyes and Crosswalks

Yesterday, while walking home from Fresh Fields with some whole-wheat flour, a bag of organic salad, tomatoes and soy chips (yes, I’m enjoying the Fresh Fields), I pulled up to the intersection of Cameron Street and Georgia Avenue (map) to cross Georgia. To my right, a young woman sporting strategically disheveled hair and wearing glasses with thick black plastic frames, a green sweater of an odd inorganic shade, black pants and black bowling-styled shoes with thick rubber wedge soles was looking up and off into the distance, where there was nothing but an ugly office building with a ground-floor bank. I thought, and then turned my head to my left because I knew I was going to say it out loud against my better judgment, “Where do these people come from?” She looked like one of those young persons for whom bohemianism is an avocation, the type that desperately congregate with their fellows around colleges or in trendy urban areas, and the thought I didn’t vocalize was “What are you doing in Silver Spring?”

I wouldn’t have asked if she hadn’t had this sour expression on her face, and if her eyes hadn’t been trying to avoid other people or anything (like traffic signals) that they might look at. Her expression seemed to me to be full of dissatisfaction at her surroundings. Perhaps she was visiting a friend and couldn’t believe she was here. Or perhaps she was an employee of the Discovery Channel who had decided to walk to work rather than commute from Adams Morgan to Bethesda as previous, and found now that she didn’t like the walk much at all. Or perhaps she had decided to come on her own, enticed by the Fresh Fields and AFI Silver and other coming amenities, and now thought herself a sucker. I had been thinking of gentrification as I walked, spurred by the I-beam skeletons of superstructures I’d been seeing all that day, so I corrected myself: it probably was just some daily quotidian disappointment, or a shock completely unrelated to the city. But I do see people like that around more nowadays, and they never look all that satisfied.

My reverie was interrupted by the part of my brain that now acts as an automatic traffic sensor, which informed me that northbound traffic had cleared on Georgia and southbound traffic was stopped for the northbound left-turn arrow: it was clear to jaywalk. I stepped off the curb and, seeing one car still coming northbound, walked briskly to the median strip. About halfway across, I noticed that the young woman had left a couple seconds after me, but was striding remarkably quickly (I don’t walk slowly) to catch up. I halted slightly at the median, and then she halted behind me, where I couldn’t directly see her; I picked it up again, and cut the corner to turn north, followed by her taking a more generous diagonal than I did and rushing into a parking lot in between two buildings, with an even sourer, almost petulant look on her face. She had mimicked everything I had done (her delays were follower delays; I’ve jaywalked enough to know) but had been scrupulous about not being seen by me.

It was an odd little non-encounter. Was she that determined to avoid contact with others that she considered the possibility of a sidelong glance a threat? Was she afraid in the big rough city, still mostly populated by those dangerous minorities? Was she specifically afraid of me? (During an elevator conversation about the nasty weather two weekends ago, an elderly woman told me, “You’re not afraid of a little rain? You’re so young and so strong, seems like the rain would be afraid of you.” I still don’t quite know what to make of that.) Had she heard my little murmur? Though that seemed impossible.

I hope it really was just a bad mood brought on by her day, and she’ll be in a brighter place tomorrow. We all have to be with each other and get along in these minimal ways. I hope we all realize that in the coming months.

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