Observation of people -- usually in an airport, park, or some other public place -- is one of the things I do for exhilaration. Last weekend I spied a young woman carefully walking into a touristy area, dragging herself behind a "walker" (the kind usually given to stroke victims, or very aged people, etc.). I watched her for more than a half an hour as she plied inexorably forward, step by step, to her destination.
She was quite young -- in her early 20's probably -- and yet incredibly infirm, fragile, even frail looking. She disappeared finally down a pedestian mall in St. Augustine (St. Georges Street -- which claims to be one of the oldest streets in that city) after a long and painstaking peripateia.
Hours later as I moved down that same street to meet my friends for dinner at the Columbia Restaurant, I espied her again. She was perched atop a low wall -- legs crossed firmly under her as she sat, walker at her side -- facing a group of shops: ice cream shop, bar, restaurant -- which could only be called "young peoples' places." She sat there catlike -- waiting to talk to people/waiting to be noticed: but even though the pedestian mall was crowded she sat untouched and unspoken to. It evoked in me a kind of small sadness.
How long would she sit there until she saw someone she knew -- or they saw her -- and spoke to her! Was she hoping that someone she didn't know would speak to her? Was she waiting for someone, or something, to happen? Was this a ritual for more than just a Friday night? I wanted to come back tomorrow, and the next day, to see if she was still there. I wondered in my head what she was doing there. Did she just need to be near people and not shut up in her small apartment? Did she just need to be seen -- to acknowledge that she was still alive, still trying, still hoping? What was the rest of her story -- I wonder.
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