The kindness of strangers

Which I don't mean so much in a Blanche DuBois getting-raped-and-then-institutionalized kind of way, more like a yogic maitri "lovingkindness for all creatures" and good Samaritan kind of way. Two incidents of note in recent weeks - the second of which happened just a few hours ago (thus engendering this post).

First was a few weeks ago, in LA. Dr. J. was headed off with the family to a Catholic ritual of some kind involving babies or small children or some such, so I treated myself to some early-morning yoga, conveniently located just 8 miles (= 11 minutes when the suburban LA highways are uncongested) from her house. This was the hot kind of yoga, not so meditative or eastern-style, but 105 degrees of sweaty goodness for 90 minutes that usually leaves me feeling happily wrung out and just better overall. Now every studio I've ever been to for this kind of yoga provides material for drop-ins: pay a little extra on top of the class fee and you can rent a mat and a towel and buy some water. But not this one - mat, check, water, check. But towel? None for rent, only for purchase. But I didn't want to buy some giant lavender towel for 3x the price I would pay at one of my discounty places, and also I didn't have room for it in the backpack and I suppose I could have left it with Dr. J., but really it was very annoying. "You really don't have towel for rent?" I asked again, hoping, I guess that the answer would change. "Maybe you should highlight that on your web page, because if I had known I would have brought one from my friend's house." As I finished pouting, this handsome guy I'd been chatting with as we waited for the studio to open popped his head out from around the corner. "Wait, you need a towel?" he asked. "I have a spare, you can use it for the class if you want." Now I come from a sweaty people (except for my Mom, who just goes kind of purple), and when you combine this with the 26 postures and high temperatures, it makes for a lot of sweat. I mean, a lot. So I stood there considering, and thinking, and weighing the pros and cons. It would save me twenty bucks and the bad mood of having to buy a stupid towel. But then could I really soak this guy's towel and then hand it back to him with a smile at the end of the session and just float away? He saw my indecision, walked over and put the towel in my hands, and said, "Please use it. Really." And so it was decided for me. His act of kindness put me in a really great mood for the entirety of the class, even though I felt super-sensitive and kind of guilty each time I felt a drip fall off my elbow, or nose, or ankle. I mean, it's one thing to be nice when it's basically effortless, but he knew that his generosity was going to entail extra laundry and cleaning up some stranger's perspiration. Which made it truly generous in my book. When class was over, I carefully folded up the towel such that the driest parts were on the outside, and walked over to where he was doing some post-class stretches. After thanking him effusively I was all ready to apologize for the ickiness when he leaned in and said, "I hope you haven't been worried about that towel being too gross. I mean, it's my spare towel, I always have it but don't really use it. So it's not like it's been dripped on every week for months, I mean, it's really very clean. So I hope you weren't worried." I couldn't believe it - here I'd spent the past 90 minutes worried about how he was going to think bad things about me once he got his towel back, but apparently that whole time he'd been worried about my perceptions of him. There's some kind of lesson in there somewhere, though I'm not sure if I can articulate it yet.

Today's incident was way more dramatic, although sadly did involve far fewer attractive and barely clad men (as in, none). In honor of Bike to Work day last Friday, I biked to work last Thursday. I know, I know, I'm such an iconoclast, or maybe just not understanding how society really works, but it's just that I was going to work from home on Friday, and the 3 block ride to the cafe didn't seem sufficiently meaningful. So I biked on Thursday instead. Anyway, although it had been over a year since I'd ridden my bike, which is in desperate need of a tuneup so not running all that smoothly, and despite taking some pretty serious detours because of badly marked trails, it was a great way to get to work. Mostly back roads and then lots of trails, most of which run alongside small rivers that have ducks and geese and all kinds of small songbirds (today I saw 9 finches landing on a tree) and many quite pretty mid-Atlantic-type vistas. And biking slow is taking about 60 minutes each way, which is just 15 minutes more than my commute via subway, and with many more health benefits. But at the end of the day, not only did my butt hurt, but also my back, both from the leaning and from the heavy backpack. So this morning I decided that on today's bicycle commute I would use my bike rack on the rear tire and attach my courier bag to it with two bungee cords. It worked fine on the way in, but the cords didn't seem to want to fully attach when I put my bag back on after work. I checked over my shoulder a few times, and listened for the rattle of the bike lock in the bag as it met with the rack each time I went over a big bump (Spookytown not big on the infrastructure, so that was pretty frequent). So imagine my horrified surprise when I made it home after 62 minutes of concerted peddling, dragged the bike down to the bike room to store it, turned around and reached to unhook the bag and get my keys, and discovered there was no bag. None. And one missing bungee cord. With a feeling of horror in my stomach, I thought back over my trip. How could I have not heard my heavy, heavy bag thudding to the ground? When was the last time I'd seen it? How could I retrace my steps by car and effectively search for my bag at the same time? What if it was on one of the car-free bike paths? Could I find someone to come along and help me on my search? Could I even get back into my apartment? I had a lot of stuff in that bag! My keys, for one, to the apartment and car and office and bike lock. My bike lock, also in the bag. And three books I need for some article revisions tonight, and my best pair of jeans, and oh, yes, my wallet too. As I was musing about how totally fucked I was if I didn't get that bag back, my neighbor appeared on her balcony, and then helpfully let me in, lent me a chair to climb over our balcony railings so I could get in through my (thankfully open) screen door, and offered any other help she could provide. I dithered about, not sure what to do first. First turned out to be getting out of the bike clothes and into human clothes once more. Second turned out to be going online, finding info about the sole credit card I carry in my wallet, and preparing to call them to cancel the card. I had just gotten the phone number and my account number and was lifting the phone to call and cancel when I got a call from the front door. It was a woman who had found my bag and had driven over to deliver it to me with her husband. They had been out walking around 10 blocks away, seen it, found my driver's license in my wallet (which was, of course, cash free) (now I'm relieved the farmer's markets here are so very expensive and I had so little cash left after yesterday's excursion), gotten in the car, and driven it on over. I wanted to give her a reward, but kind of had had all my cash stolen, so instead thanked her about a million times. "Just being a Good Samaritan," she said. "Well, you saved my day," I said. "Or week. Or month." As I staggered back to the house, relieved and also carrying a really heavy bag, I looked at my watch and realized that only 25 minutes had passed since the time I had realized my bag was missing. 25 minutes! It has got to be the speediest bag delivery/wallet recovery in Spookytown in many years. I mean, how nice is that? I'm certainly a person who has returned wallets in her day, but not within seconds of finding them. So I'm feeling a little lucky today, at least vis-a-vis bag karma. And so very appreciative of the kindness of strangers .

Sweet mysteries of (Spookytown) life

On the way home from Green Drinks tonight (around the time my eyes started permanently crossing each time I encountered the word "reflexivity" I decided that I *had* to take a break from working on my article revisions) the bus got pretty crowded, as it often does. It's my usual way to get home from downtown Spookytown, unless I'm walking, since it drops me off right on my corner, and while it starts out pretty empty, by the time I get off it's a bit of a push to get through the crowds and make it to the door. There are basically two types of passengers on this route - white Spookytown wonky types (often besuited) and Hispanic recent immigrant types, sitting or standing next to each other, never really talking or looking at one another, worlds adjacent but not intersecting. Well, except in me, with members of both groups clearly thinking I'm one of theirs. Anyway, tonight about halfway home with the bus half full about 8 Hispanic men filed on, all in very clean t-shirts and jeans, most wearing baseball caps. The second guy, with incredibly feathered hair, was wearing a nametag, the paper kind with adhesive on the back, with "JOB" hand written on it. "Some kind of job fair?" I thought. Until the seventh guy got on and he too was wearing a similar nametag (none of the other guys were), and his said "DARWIN." So now I'm thinking they had come from a role-playing church-based debate on intelligent design vs. evolution? I mean, what else could this be?

L.A. Story

So after I get into LA last Sunday I head up to West Hollywood -- the plan is to meet up with the Stik and Rabbitlet for brunch and then head to a museum show of pre-fab houses (which was about as interesting as it sounds, although when I made these plans I was under the mistaken impression that it was going to be about 50X more interesting -- serves me right for not thoroughly reading the exhibit description). Now unbeknownst to me, the Stik and Rabbitlet are quite the connoisseurs of chic eateries around town, and while upon entering I think the cafe where we end up is just a questionably spelled modern-hippie health-oriented-and-fair-trade kind of place, it is apparently also frequented by celebrities. You know, with some frequency. So we're sitting and eating and catching up when a frisson of excitement passes through the place at the entrance of a volatile, recently tattooed boxer, a man with maybe not the best reputation but who this morning appears well-behaved, well-dressed, and really not very big at all. As the conversation at probably every table in the restaurant turns to the subject of ear-biting (I'm guessing here, but seriously, how could it not have?) he and his slightly tawdry companion settle in around two tables behind us. Not long after, we finish our meal, get up, and start wending our way towards the exit. The tables are really close together, so it's kind of hard to run the gauntlet without actually touching anyone. Precisely at the moment as I'm passing by the celebrity boxer's table, he leans back while making an emphatic comment on his cellphone and his left elbow brushes up against my right buttock. Not in a lingering way, but definitely with some force behind it.

Now, I wish I could say that some kind of electric charge passed through me, or that it was a transformative experience in some way. But upon reflection, I decided that it didn't feel any different from any other ass-grazings in recent memory, except maybe a bit less intentional than most. (I'm thinking in particular here of a Portishead concert a few years back in which a tall man standing in front of me graciously offered to switch places so I could actually see, although I realized soon enough that there was a serious price to pay.) Reactions to this story to date have been mixed. AM and The Judge, academics and recent transplantees from Chicago (former neighbors who I miss a ton, not just because of their tendency to issue last-minute invitations to come over and partake in their excellent cooking) exclaimed later that night, "Wait, you were in town all of an hour and a half and had your butt grazed by [Mr. Volatile Boxer's] elbow? We've been here a year and a half already, and have yet to see anybody!" A new acquaintance, also an arts-oriented academic, took a slightly different approach, and ran a little experiment in which he managed to walk by a chair I was sitting in such that he himself was grazed by my left elbow. I thought this was really funny, but he seemed unmoved -- his interpretation was that it was because he's 6'2" and so all I managed to graze was a point slightly above his knee. Maybe if I had a reputation for partner-beating and ear-biting it would have been a more exciting experience?