Letter to a Stranger

To the man with many lives

In seeking out the familiar in unfamiliar settings, I found myself at a quintessentially San Franciscan coffee shop in Berlin, all marble countertops, geometric shapes, and negative space. The walls were lined with shelves of lifestyle magazines, quietly boasting black-and-white photos and typographic precision. This was one of my favorite activities: sitting at a coffee shop and inconspicuously people watching, peeking into the supposed real lives of other people, a voyeur on tour.

My gaze happened to fall on you — dignified, a trickle of grey edging into your beard — as you waited in line. You held my eyes in yours for a moment, a fermata in the mid-morning stanza. You were handsome, but not in a conventional way. Somehow, you reminded me of a blank canvas — stark, welcoming, brimming with possibilities.

Moments later, you were standing next to me. “Would it be okay if I sat here with you?” There were open tables in the coffee shop. “Yeah, sure.” You smiled at me, a wide but weary smile.

You cleared your throat as you sat down, as if preparing for a pronouncement. You were in Berlin from London on business, you explained. You’d been making this trip every week for six years now. You were worn, but patient. You were almost done with what you were here to do, and then you would move somewhere entirely unknown and begin again. “And you?”

My abbreviated story ended with a shrug. “I haven’t really done much…yet.” I concluded apologetically, hopefully. You nodded — overly enthusiastically, I’d thought. “Finding your way is the most interesting part,” you said. “I think we were meant to wander — we should wander. The road is long, no? It’s better not to know the way.”

I told you about all the Facebook friends who seemed to know the way, who’ve found themselves safe and sound behind white picket fences. I told you that my biggest fear was of silent family dinners in front of the T.V. — a snapshot that had found its way into my brain when I was a kid and had refused to leave — and that my biggest hubris was that I believed that I was made for something more. In response, you stood up and offered me your hand, broad and calloused like your smile. “How about a walk?”

We walked ponderously, with you leading the way. “I hope you don’t mind,” you said, “if I tell you about myself.”

For as long as you know, your parents were unhappy, together and apart. They left you, one at a time, by the time you were seventeen. You found yourself having to find yourself before you graduated high school. But, to this day, two decades later, they still send you money, impersonal checks and impersonal well-wishes on personalized stationery. Sometimes, the paper smells like your mother. Sometimes, you wonder how she is. Most of the time, though, you tuck the mail in a black wooden box and don’t look back. Your hands were in your pockets now, your head bowed in remembrance.

So, you continued, from the age of seventeen, you were angry at the world, angry at your parents, angry at yourself, angry at your lot in the world. You didn’t know what you were going to do with your life, so for many years, you did nothing but live.

“They say cats have nine lives, but I think humans have many lives too,” your British lilt unfairly transforming this brazenly ordinary statement into something elegant. You became, in no particular order, an artist, a vandal, a teacher, an architect, a writer, a lover, a foster parent, an addict, and a pilot.

“There were wrong turns and new beginnings,” you said, finding your stride and your poetry, “I was directionless in the lives I’ve lived, but I think that was the only way I could have lived them.” You glanced at me from the corner of your eye, suddenly shy.

One day, you woke up alone in an apartment with concrete walls and one small window. You had left the warm bed of another for the last time, and with it the urgent grasp of your adopted daughter’s precious, little hand. You’d packed a grey suitcase of books and five changes of clothes. You were wandering again, unrooted, a speck of dust in the universe looking for another life — and you’d never felt more wholly yourself. And here you were, on life number who knows what.

All of a sudden, we found ourselves at the edge of a secret garden — shrubbery, trees, gravestones, and monuments dotting a lush, grassy expanse. Before this moment, I’d barely noticed our surroundings, the scenery that passed us by. I had thought we were walking aimlessly, with no destination in mind. This was the Georgen-Parochialgemeinde, you told me, a cemetery in the middle of the city. It was built in 1814 and was home to several of Germany’s eminent historical figures. Returning to your story, you said that you had no grand morals for me; you wanted only that I consider that perhaps wandering was exactly where I needed to be. You paused for a beat. We stood still, looking out into the the green.

“This is where I take my leave of you — I have to go,” you smiled, “but it would be nice to find you again.”

I hesitated, my mind retracing your story, trying to reorient myself. Before I could respond, you laughed, nodded, and bowed comically. Then, you walked away.

Maybe in the next lives we live.