LISTENING EYES

            I sat at the MAX station for a half hour waiting for the trolley to arrive and a man approached me. I have always had an acute awareness for the people that surround me and it was no different when I first saw him walk towards me. He had a long grey trench coat (which believe it or not Californians, is acceptable in Oregon), a cigarette tucked behind his uncombed hair, and vociferous but hallow eyes. He sat right next to me and I could feel his eyes stretch across my body. I was not afraid; he looked at me like a toddler looks at a parent playing peek-a-boo—with sheer amazement.

            Without saying words, the stranger and myself were becoming acquainted, a level of “accustomazation” overwhelmed me as I allowed for the world I was living to become intertwined with his own. He pulled out a cigarette from his pocket, leaving the one behind his ear for later, and scattered smoke into the frozen air. Still starring at me, he puffed once more so that the smoke clouded my vision and made me teary eyed and then, he began to speak:

  -Elizabeth Taylor died today, her green eyes are dead

I was startled, but wanted to appear unalarmed and so I replied with a thoughtful sigh and a small condolence on behalf of the actress. He continued.

-Elizabeth Taylor was a beautiful actress, but she was the devil. Devil woman married the devil            and had devil children. She had green eyes. Green eyes make you the devil.

I nodded in fearful agreement and smiled and he finished. He then threw his cigarette on the tracks of the MAX and walked away. Despite the trepidation that accompanied my conversation with this stranger, I boarded the MAX with a humbled feeling. Out of all the people waiting for the MAX, he had chosen to confide in me; coincidentally for sure, but nonetheless, I was, for five minutes, this stranger’s confidant.

            The humbled feeling has not left me even now, hours after we parted, because I can’t help but wonder who the last person was that allowed for fear to take the back seat and rather, to listen to the “stranger”. Two days ago Rebecca (the woman I am staying with in Costa Rica) emailed me and she told me that an 18-year-old boy died in the community I will be serving. I thought of him, the boy with no name, a stranger, and wondered if he would have talked to random people at the MAX station. I wondered even more if he would listen to someone else if he had been at a MAX station.

            And this may all seem like a jumble but what I am feeling right now and cannot articulate is that I was connected to a stranger today. And in a strange way, the trench coat stranger was connected to the Costa Rican boy because they were both a little forgotten in their own home, their own society. They both went unnoticed because the trench coat stranger was mentally unstable and a bit scary and the Costa Rican boy was poor. They went unseen. 

            This entry is for the forgotten trench coat man that smokes cigarettes on the MAX:

you are being thought of. And to the green-eyed strangers I have yet to meet, I am one of you; let me listen to what others forget in silence.