I was to meet a friend tonight at Safeco Field tonight for a Mariners game, which we hoped would not be a repeat of their recent history. Carpooling left me near the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle at 5:30 on a Monday, with the first pitch slated for 7:05 PM. An hour and a half to kill. My attempts at finding pre-game company on short notice unsuccessful, I settled on a leisurely walk to the ballpark, just over a mile and a half south along 1st Avenue, through some of the more colorful parts of the city. A sunny warm day in Seattle is one of the most glorious events on Earth, and I wasn’t going to waste it sitting on a bus.
We see things at street level and sidewalk pace that are imperceptible when we are locked away inside our cars, insulated from the rest of the world. I have forgotten this recently, and am now reminded that I should walk more, to see more, and to understand how life progresses individually, slowly, and uniquely for all of us.
I saw a middle-aged but still old Indian man (is Native American more acceptable?). Missing all his front teeth, with deep, leather-like skin and graying hair, he was slowly, with the assistance of a cane despite his upright posture, making his way toward me across Columbia at the intersection of 1st Avenue. As the crossing signal changed, he obeyed it perfectly and literally. At the “walk” signal, he walked. When the signal changed to “stop,” he stopped — two feet short of his goal, my side of Columbia. Traffic navigated around the old man as he muttered something incoherent, or perhaps merely incomprehensible. I caught something about “them,” the ubiquitous “them” we all use to assign responsibility to anyone but ourselves for the state of the world around us. In the case of the schizophrenic, the psychotic, the demented, among others, They take on a far more sinister shade, reaching, assignably responsible, into his world, to achieve some incoherent, or perhaps merely incomprehensible, purpose. The man, muttering, stood stock still as They capriciously changed the lights around him while we, the uncomfortable masses of more privileged, hoped silently that They would see fit to spare us of the final witness to this man’s fate, likely that of everyone who stands, silently obeying the signals.
The light changed again, and the old man full of signs ceased muttering. He started moving forward slowly, taking nearly ten seconds to cover the last two feet, finally allowing his arrested audience the luxury of a collective sigh as he safely made one more crossing. Released, we all crossed and continued, not one of us looking back to see which cockeyed direction the old man’s life might take next.
Having assigned his existence now to them, we are no longer his fate’s witnesses.