I designated yesterday my day off. The thing about grad school is that all your tasks expand to fill the time you have--a paper can always get better, a text can always be read more closely, a presentation can always be more thoroughly researched. So, since I've been trying to be more disciplined about doing my work before the very, very last-minute final deadline forces me to, I've also been taking specific time off--not I-should-be-doing-homework-but-I'm-putting-it-off-for-just-five-more-minutes time off, but put-the-homework-away-do-something-relaxing-and-unstressful time off. So anyway, yesterday was it. I walked down to the Saturday Market and picked up some veggies and some fresh strawberries--yum!

[I'm currently debating the decision that often presents itself these days: I can either (a) listen to my neighbor, Cindy, outside my window, performing her daily expletive-ridden monologue about how horrible her life is or (b) close the window, which muffles (but doesn't entirely block) the sound, and deprive myself of the lovely evening breeze inside my stuffy apartment. What to do, what to do...
Oh dear, oh dear. I just overheard my neighbors talking about being in Lebanon today! Why are they haunting me? I'm going to move and they're going to end up as my neighbors again, I know it! I will never escape!]

On one corner there was a group from one of the local churches. They had some tables set up, I believe, and a bunch of youth-group kids spread out through the crowd handing out flyers--one for a Christian concert, one for a healing service. The rest, on the corner, were speaking to the crowds in the produce section of the market across the street. Yelling at the top of your lungs can get tiring, I guess, because they were trading off, one after another, about five minutes each. Of course, their speeches weren't very interesting to me, seeing's how I've heard various versions of them about a million times. What was interesting was watching the responses of the "audience." Most people just concentrated on ignoring them, the way people in this town learn to ignore loud crazies. They were quieter than normal, though, and now and then someone would almost flinch at the sound of "hell" being yelled from across the street. Those who were shopping with friends clustered in little groups and threw glances over their shoulders at the speakers; standing nearby I could only hear occasional words--"Christians," "street," "preaching." Wandering through the lines and booths, now and then I came across an intense young person, doing a little preaching of his own to a group of rapt friends, about how horrible it is that we all have to listen to that drivel and that's why he moved away from New York in the first place, because all those psycho Christians were on every corner and you just couldn't get away from it, and how this is why the modern church is shrinking across the country because Christians just haven't figured out that their time is up. God is dead, after all, and the sooner we all wake up to that fact the better. Oh yes, nodded his friends. We agree. Completely.

One after another, the earnest, wide-eyed speakers stood up to speak. I was dead, they said, and God woke me up. I was lost, and he found me. I thought I had it all, but God showed me I had nothing. God can do the same thing for you. He can do the exact same thing for you.

And I wondered. Here in Eugene, where you can buy four different kinds of anarchic magazines at every bookstore, where you can sit at a bus stop next to a guy who laughs at nothing for twenty minutes straight, where smoking pot is pretty much a religion, where people actually live in communes downtown, where right next to the Campus Crusade for Christ building is a Baha'i Faith Center, where at least a third of the houses have Tibetan prayer flags over their front doors, what is really being accomplished by preaching on street corners? Far be it from me to doubt the potency of Scripture, but what exactly is the point of stepping up between the anarchic Leninist and the tie-dyed flower child and saying, "To fix your problems, try Jesus." Because, really, if you want something to make your life better real quick, tie-dye girl can probably sell you something that will kick in a lot faster than Jesus.

Anyway, I immediately started feeling guilty for these thoughts and said to myself, well, who knows. Maybe someone will hear them today and find God. Naturally, right at that moment I heard someone behind me say, "Oh goody, the Christians are out again," and was struck with the urge to turn around and beg them, please, please don't judge us all by the people who preach on the corner! Which brought me to a new quandary: does the slight possibility that one random person will emerge from their drugged haze, hear the word Jesus, and instantly turn their life around balance the fact that tens, even hundreds of people are currently being further convinced that evangelical Christians are a bunch of blind, deluded fools who are responsibile for most of the ills on earth, along with Muslim terrorists and Jewish Zionists? I mean, really. Does it?

Well, question still unanswered, I finished my shopping and headed down to my favorite corner in Eugene--an open, brick courtyard with iron tables and chairs spread across it and young trees growing in the corners--to write it out in my notebook. Not long after, an old lady with several bags in one hand and a tofu hotdog with all the trimmings clutched in the other stepped up to my table and asked me if she could sit down. "Of course," I said, never one to send away old ladies. I adjusted my bags of carrots and spinach to give her more room and went back to my notebook. She ate her hotdog.

After a bit, she turned to me. "Are you a writer?"

"I'd like to be someday," I answered, deciding at once that I could trust this woman (and now you, apparently) with my deep, dark secret. "I'm just a grad student now."

"Really, that's nice. I'm an artist."

"Wow, what's your medium?"

"Uh, well, I paint on canvases, and mixed media. Is it mixed medium or mixed media? I never know."

"Mixed media," I answered, ever the helpful grammar guru. "'Media' is plural."

"Hmm. Well, I was meeting someone today..." she trailed off. (This was the first of many sentences that she didn't finish. She liked to talk, but if I wanted to hear the whole story, I had to constantly ask leading questions. I'll spare you that, though, and include what I conjectured by filling in the blanks, as if it was a complete narrative.) "He was meeting me at the market. I was supposed to bring him this work to show. Would you like to see my picture?" She pulled out a Xeroxed copy of an Impressionist-style piece, a picture of a covered bridge.

"It's very pretty," I said, "I like the colors."

"You know, that's something people always say. I like to use little bits of color like that, but I always make sure you can tell what it is. It's important that you can tell what it is. And I use A---- [an art product that I'm not familiar with]. It's new and that's what I always use. But he wasn't there today. I suppose he thought it was going to rain. It does almost look like it's going to rain, doesn't it? Do you ever buy honey from that man...oh, he sells at the market, sometimes on this side...but they move their booths around, you know, so I don't know where he was today. But he's a very nice-looking young man and he sells honey." She fingered her collar and smiled shyly. "I flirted with him a little today....

"But I talk to a lot of people. I like to just go up to people and talk to them. Especially... well, you know, there are a lot of people around who are homeless. Do you ever... sometimes I go talk to them. I give them fifty cents and ask them about their histories." She looked at me and my notebook significantly. "They have such interesting stories. Can I tell you a story? There's one man I talk to a lot. He plays the guitar sometimes. One day I was walking by and he was playing his guitar and I just stopped and listened. And I don't know... The song he was playing was just so... It just reached my heart. I listened to it for so long...

"But then the next Saturday I came back and he was high!" This last said in an almost-whisper, with a guilty giggle. "He was playing and singing, but it wasn't the song. The song just wasn't... I asked him if he could play that song, real innocent, like I didn't know. I just asked him real innocent. The lady in the booth nearby, she glared at him--she didn't want him to be there. But he's sure that he's going to be famous. And he's an artist too. And you know what is interesting? His father is rich. His uncle makes A----. And I'm related to the Disneys! Really. The actual Disneys. And do you know what Disney used in for the old cartoons? A----. Isn't that amazing." She sighed. Then she looked at me. "Isn't that a great story? We should both do a piece, using A----, and send it to Disney. That would be a good conclusion. Or maybe... I don't know. It needs a conclusion, though...

"And that song...."

She looked at her watch. "Oh, the bus... I guess I'll have to catch the next one." She settled back in her seat, to my delight. "But they are so interesting, you see," she continued, picking up one of her threads of thought. "I talk to another one on the corner of ----- and ----." She fingered her collar again. "I sometimes think... He always tells me things, you see. And I always give him a dollar or two. He says that he doesn't like to ask senior citizens because it's disrespectful. I'm 83. I don't look it, do I?" She paused, clearly expecting an answer.

After a beat, I answered, "uh, no." She really didn't, but it took me a bit to decide, since I'm still young enough that anything past 65 looks pretty much the same to me.

"I know I don't look 80," she said confidently. "I'm really young... I mean... well, my body is old but my soul is young. Anyway, he used to stay at a place on Highway 99. They take care of schitzophrenics and such. So many of them are like that. Some people say, 'Well, they should just do something,' but there are other things, like that, you know. So I always try to help. Well, look at that man." She pointed to a guy at another table, likely homeless, in a wheelchair. "He's crippled and he's reading the paper. I suppose he could be reading the TV guide or advertisements, but he's reading the paper and I'm.... Well, we're just sitting here and he's reading the paper. So you just never know.

"But I like to talk to them. I like to talk. You're good at listening. Most people just like to talk, you know?"

"Well, everybody's got something to tell," I said.

"Yes, they do! So are you writing now?" She asked eagerly.

"Oh, no, I'm just writing observations. I don't really have time. I mostly just write papers these days. But I'm graduating in a couple of months--I mean, weeks."

"And then you can write?"

"Well, I have to work, pay the rent. But maybe next summer."

"That's good. There's so many things to write about. You could write observations about that guy sitting over there. He's probably got an interesting story. And there's another man...." she fingered her collar. "He was kind of my boyfriend, but it didn't work out. But he....

"I should catch the bus. It's almost time. Thank you for letting me sit with you. I always try to sit with people and talk to them. I was going to sit with him [pointing to the man with the newspaper], but I wasn't up to it. I just wasn't up to it today. Would you like one of my pictures? I'll give you one." She pulled out a Xeroxed sheet with two pictures on it--a church steeple and an old barn. "That's my friend's barn. She asked me to paint it for her. And that's a church in Harrisburg. It's important that you can tell what it is. I like to paint the St. Francis of Assisi, with the arms out like this. Everyone likes that. They really like that one. And I can copy them at Kinkos for really cheap. Except I don't know how to work it. Here, you take this one. Good luck with your writing. Maybe I'll see you here some other time.

"I better catch that bus. I'll let you get back to your work now. Thank you."

She walked away with the last bit of tofu hotdog and her bags of artwork. I looked at my notebook and tried to decide if I would stay and write it all down or start walking home and let it sit awhile. I finally decided on the latter, gathered up my bags, stopped by the library to make my armload even fuller, and walked on home, thinking about how lucky I am that these people find me. If I ever become I writer, it will be for this reason. Everybody's got something to tell.

Labels: anecdote, Christian sub-culture, Eugene, neighbors

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Saturday, May 20, 2006