People Watching

We go to see a dance performance of Paul Taylor's choreography, touring with his dancers from North America. (If you are feeling under informed don't worry - I didn't know who Paul Taylor was either, but I do now and will be following him actively. Funny how I have to go to South America to find him!) One of his pieces sticks in my mind especially because it was inspired by him sitting on an esplanade so somewhere in North America and, essentially, people watching. The piece takes the movement and emotions of every day life, running, walking, falling, playing, courting, and translates it into dance. Which makes a lot of sense. Many of those movements, social rituals, life itself can quite easily be viewed as a kind of dance. Paul Taylor spent an afternoon people watching - and found beauty.

And yet so often 'people watching' is used as a lose term for 'general bitching'. I remember one time on particular when I was having lunch with friends and one of the guy's girlfriends said,

"Let's sit by the window. I love to people watch."

I agreed enthusiastically, where followed a rather interminable monologue consisting largely of "what IS she wearing?" and "look how snotty that kid is. Why doesn't somebody wipe his nose?"

By the end of lunch I found myself slightly disenchanted, not just with my friend's girlfriend but with people in general. Everything and everybody seemed a little greyer and a little grubbier than before.

Today, as we go to the park, to sit for a change rather than walking or looking, to the dance and to dinner, it feels as though every chance encounter or glimpse of other people is designed specifically to make me love life and the humankind that populates it, even more.

We begin by skyping my family, including my two small nieces,  which is rather obviously life affirming, but if that doesn't convince you, check out the rest:

The three small children who approach us in the park, shyly, then growing in confidence, and eventually come and sit with us, wide eyed at our foreignness, and full of trust and innocence, observing with surprise that we are drinking water and not wearing our shoes, and wholly unable to understand that we don't speak Spanish. Or at least not the way they do. Even so, never once do they appear frustrated by our apparent backwardness, waiting patiently for our stumbling replies, and, if what we have said has not made sense, sinpky asking the question again.

We are approached twice by small groups of students from the medical college, who have an assignment for their English language module, to interview an English speaker. Both times it is a pleasure, the students are shy and giggly but mature and pleasant, and one of them leaves us, approaches a passing ice cream seller, then comes back with an ice cream for each of us to say thank you!

A small child spends, literally, hours getting ready with her kite, and her very patient mother, for five blissful seconds in which she can run, holding the string, the kite sailing a metre or so off the ground behind her. If you ever want a picture of pure happiness, watch a child running holding a kite. For some reason it is unfailingly the most ecstatic thing they have ever experienced, and I challenge anyone, child lover or otherwise, not to find themselves smiling in response.

A young lad, maybe sixteen, approaches us selling roses. He explains that they cost a dollar each, and that he is raising money for his uncle who has cancer. I  struck by his enterprising attitude, and by his fluent English, once he realises we are not fluent Spanish speakers, though he is very polite, speaking Spanish with us all through the transaction until we give the game away by talking to reach other in gringo.

After the dance, we go out to dinner (we are celebrating an anniversary) and our waiter is the smiliest man in the world. He chuckles about us having menus, about us eating everything on our plates and about us speaking Spanish. Everything makes him smile. At the end of the meal we are hesitating over coffee, until he brings out the 'coffee siphons' (they look like a science experiment and turn coffee into a performance) and practically bags us to let him make us one, chuckling and rubbing his hands as he prepares it.

The coffee is a talking point, which gets us chatting to the owner, who is a lone American, having married into an Ecuadorian family. We talk about the joy of 'just having a go', the ease of taking a risk here as opposed to in the US or Europe, the poverty balanced with the freedom of thinking here, vegetarian cooking and more. Paying, seems, to him, an afterthought.

On the way home a man with that South American enthusiasm which leaves you unable to resist, compels us into a tiny courtyard where a band is setting up to play. We shrug, pay five dollars and settle in. The band is unexpected and fantastic. They don't have a CD, despite us trying desperately to buy one. They will have to remain a beautiful memory. Every single band member was smiling and dancing all the way through every number. It didn't take long for the spectators to be doing the same. We wheel out our rusty, and rather missed, salsa, and roll out again to discover that somehow it has become midnight.

When we are dancing, I am vaguely worried about someone taking our bags. Nobody does.

When we walk home, although we take the road route so it is lit and avoids small alleyways, I am vaguely worried that someone will mug us. Guess what? Nobody does.

It occurs to me though, that this post could go another way. These are the moments I remember, the overwhelming impression I have of this day and of the people in it. But perhaps when you people watch, you see what you look for.

I suppose I could relay the woman on the bus, who rolled her eyes theatrically and then stared at us unpleasantly when we got shut in the door because we couldn't get our elbows out South Americanly enough. Or the lady in the Panadoria who was impatient with our Spanish, or more accurately, our lack of knowledge as to what the unidentified pastries might be called. Or the mam at the theatre who told us to wait at a different door. Then let everybody else go through the first one.

But there are so much fewer of these anecdotes. That's all of them. Three solitary instances cannot change a great day. Or can they? Does it depend where you chose to put the emphasis? Today I happened not to really care much about the latter interactions, but remembered vividly and was excited by the others. I'm no saint but I think I chose the better option.

My tagline to this blog is 'live life so it makes a good story.' But perhaps it's also important to think through the genre. What kind of story do you want to write?