Long enough
I didn’t know what to do with myself after lunch today. I have lunch almost every day at the same buffet place of Guanqian Road. I’ve taken every possible route there over the years, and every possible route back to my afternoon job.
Today I couldn’t face the walk south on Guanqian Road again. It’s been too long, and I’m numb and lost from insufficient wandering. I walked north and ducked into a stale electronics store, the kind where boxes are piling up and the staff wander aimlessly or stare at their phones while the merchandise beeps and flashes automatically. The new Microsoft Surface tablets held the center spot, but nobody was interested.
When I walked out the doors, the rain had started, hard and uncompromising, but it felt right to me. There should be rain right now, I thought. I walked up to the intersection of Guanqian and Zhongxiao, where the big yellow tiled building used to look out over the old train station back in the day when it was the tallest building around.
I walked a block over, wondering who lived behind the curtained windows lining the upper stories, and stopped at the intersection of Huaining and Kaifeng. There I stood, watching people cross the streets, some running, some limping, most with umbrellas. An umbrella vendor called out “Buy an umbrella!” every so often, in Taiwanese. I stood under the eaves of the least interesting building on the intersection and looked at the scene. The brightly lit office windows of the bank building towering over Chongqing South Road, the old, worn cafe where, one night years ago, I was convinced to buy my first digital camcorder. The faces of girls staring out of the second floor of Starbucks. A black-and-white cat eating leftovers from a Korean restaurant. Travelers, from places like Europe and Japan and Singapore, striding to and from the nearby hostels. An albino woman with long white hair lit up the scene like a beacon as she strode across in her bright pink dress and white umbrella, smiling at everyone she saw.
I’m not sure how long I stood there. Maybe 15 minutes or half an hour. My camera was around my neck but I didn’t take a single shot. I was just looking, at the people, at the details, at the rain in the puddles, and listening, to the bits of conversation, the cars and scooters. That intersection has seen things. I stood there so long I felt I was looking at a webcam, before I realized I could move.
The wet walk to my office didn’t take long, unfortunately.
