(This is being written as the end, I think, of a line of incomplete actions that are trailing behind me like hopeful, trustful, hungry kittens: cleaning the bathroom; going through the lovely old bowl in the kitchen where I keep bulk foodstuffs to find beans with which to fill a just knitted bag for juggling; making a cup of tea with the last of some wonderful mixture I bought at a health food store because it smelled so good and keeping a bit to take back to shop and hopefully get again (actually this is a completed task as I am drinking the tea); filling the knitted bag and finding the design is worthwhile but the size too large so rooting through another knitting project to find the 4 ½ inch double pointed needles (these are handmade) and starting the first three or four rows of a new bag and assessing the result as promising; adding a PS to a previous email (this also completed). By the incomplete I mean there are ‘remnants’ of the activity needing to be completed – knitting project strewn across bed, foodstuffs strewn across kitchen table, new juggling bag-to-be sitting on studio table………)
In Chinatown at the Café on the weekend it seemed better to sit indoors as my marrow was chilled from sitting at the computer without a sweater so I put my Knitting bag down on one of the tables and went to get a hot chocolate and biscotti. By then my body had warmed up (having by now both sweater and coat on) and the ‘noise’ of the radio playing was the deciding factor to go outdoors. (I really don’t understand the purpose of a radio playing in an eating place – you can’t really hear it and no one is listening). Outdoors there was no one on the patio except me which was unusual but the weather was on the verge of being warm enough for unquestionable outside-being and the day on the verge of being patron-friendly. I sat.
The usual person was leaning against the wall of a building with his bike and his bags and his “Spare some change” which with him is not a question but also not a statement: it would take a backward question mark to convey his way of asking/speaking and my computer doesn’t give me that option. He doesn’t approach me. I’ve found that such people tend to not ask those of us they see regularly who don’t ‘give’. We also tend to avoid eye contact, each to each, for some reason.
There were a line of empty tables but suddenly someone was sitting at the table beside me and declaring, “Well, I wonder if someone is going to buy me a coffee today. I’ll just have to see.” I glanced at her but she was not looking at me and I didn’t feel like conversing. I went through a minor tussle within, this ignoring of another human being – no, it’s not so much the ignoring – I can understand and accept the need to make a choice – it was more coming why I needed to make the choice. And the knowledge was that our situations are similar but our means of living them differ. I could give her money for coffee. I didn’t. Why not? Because of the fear that it would be an ongoing request whenever I sat there. Yes, guilt. When she got up and left I was relieved.
The woman who had also refused her request for money for coffee came back out of the café to the little terrier she had tied to the tree and put her muffin and coffee on the table one over. She had on sunglasses although there was no sun. She put the dog up on the chair next to her and talked to it and fed it muffin. I was thinking how wonderfully odd we all are as humans when two women came along who knew her and they began to chat. She took off her sunglasses. They discussed dogs. If I had a dog I could have paid more attention to where one can take a dog and bathe him or her without stooping across a bathtub and dealing with cleaning the drain afterward and where someone clips nails expertly before the bath, not after as one might think. Me, sitting there, knitting, inadvertently eavesdropping. Wonderfully odd.