words as encounter•enchanter
I got off the 22 at Fillmore and Union, thinking to walk down to the SFPL branch library in the Marina and do some work on IM there. On the ride up from Japantown, I'd sat in the front, where the seats are reserved for the elderly, pregnant women or those with infants, or simply the weary. To my left was an elder citizen with his iPhone open to the NY Times word game "Spelling Bee," which Abigail and her daughters got me hooked on some years ago when they were vacationing on Maui. I got really good at it, but hadn't played it regularly for a year or two now.
The gentleman was pretty good, too, I saw; then I leaned over and said, "...have you gotten CLOTHE?" He smiled, clicked on the finished list and saw it there. After a sec I then volunteered, "...oh: CHALLAH, as in the bread." That one he didn't have, and he smiled as he added it to his list. He tilted the phone's face towards me, sharing the puzzle-making. "CHELATE..." I said, "...it's a term in chemistry, I think." He tried it, with both one L and two Ls but neither took; which led to a brief discussion of our respective pet peeves in the game, which told me all I needed to know about the man. ::chuckle::
Tim then tapped in, CHOCOLATE, which turned out to be a pangram. We high-fived. After a minute or so of meditation on the 7 scrambled letters around its honeycomb, as the bus headed right down steep Steiner Street after having turned left on Broadway where the high point of Fillmore drops precipitously down to the Bay and a vista compels, I said... "...oh — ECHOLOCATE!" He said, "Oh wow!" as he tapped in the letters and voilá, the second pangram appeared. "Impressive!" my seatmate said.
One of my pet peeves about life in the first third of the 21st century is the black hole of mobile phones sucking all the attention out of people going about their everyday. I'm as guilty as everyone else, of course, giving in to the default of looking or listening or reading or playing or mindlessly scrolling through feeds on that glowing rectangular device, instead of engaging with people, or animals, or things, or books, or with whatever's near to hand or body or mind. You know, the cardinal elements that have elicited qualia in us monkey-brains for uncounted millennia.
So, these days, I intentionally insert myself into my fellow humans' mindspaces who (a) more often than not, have their noses buried in the damned handhelds, but (b) actually look up and engage, when reached out to. Sometimes it's just a word of greeting, other times a question; but in 9 out of 10 times the opening leads somewhere else. I'm actually able to grab someone from the event horizon they are infinitely falling into, somehow gently easing them back out into the vale of the real. ::chuckle:: And more often than not, something delightful and very human then happens, simple unmediated connection. All it takes is a word which, that afternoon, was CLOTHE. Tim got off at Steiner and Union, saying, "Have a good evening, partner." And it was. It was.
[ Amazing selection of rice at this grocery store; but then it's Nijiya Market in Japantown, after all. I chose a 5-lb. bag of Kokuho Rose for quality AND price, and also from the recommendation of a zen•mind. ;-) ]
