Sagacity in Seattle

Ever have a conversation with someone so…epically unexpected and surprising that it makes your head spin? 

When someone without knowing you all that well has so much insight into your head without invitation or suggestion that it derails your train of thought? 

An interaction that makes you reevaluate the way in which you connect with the world. Reassessing whether or not you spend you time wading in the shallow end of the conversation pool rather than treading in the more uncertain, fluid territory. I’m not speaking of the TOPIC of conversation per say, but the texture of the interaction.

We met casually on the Friday before last. He was there from Seattle to play in a band. I was there presumably to hear the music while keeping my own emotional tone from derailing into a dissonant, chaotic key. His band mate, our mutual friend, mentioned to him offhandedly about the situation underlying that evening merely in passing. 

He friended me the next week, sent me a nice note and added.

PS I know you may disagree and I totally respect that, but I think you're prettier without make-up. I'm sure you get this all the time, but you have two of the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen on anyone. ;)

Very sweet.We talked at length this past Friday. He inquired after the Friday night situation, I filled him in on some very vague details and the fact that he never showed. His response:

“Wow! You looked like you were having a great time! I had no idea that you were running on a double track that night.”

“Double track?”

“I mean you must have had so much anxiety - waiting for him to walk through that door all evening and so frustrated when he didn’t show after putting yourself through all of that emotional expectation”

Crickets.

“Scarlett?”

“Yes? I mean - Yes.”

I was just a bit stunned. Yes. Yes, Seattle. That is Exactly what was going through my head.

“That must have been incredibly draining”

Yes - yes it was - but who has the emotional radar to pinpoint that?

“Uh huh”

Keep in mind this man has NO background knowledge of who this ‘ex” is - could have been 5 years ago? 5 days? But….damn.

What gets me, or rather disturbs me the most is that it was a passing conversation. It wasn’t some dark, soul searching dialogue over hours of chatter and the hazy enlightenment which comes only after several bottles of Zin. It was instead, a passing tone of conversation that may, standing alone, be left unworthy of mention or afterthought. The ease with which he saw through the layers of emotion and bullshit sans gravitas or occasion - only passing brilliance. 

I suppose at the end of the day its really a difference between judging or responding to someone else’s story and really attempting to understand their experience. A difference, in short, between black, white and the spectrum of hues of which we may only note a fraction. 

Its amazing, isn’t it, the way in which a person makes us see ourselves, not by pointing out flaws, or even by painting the must beautiful portrait, believable or not; but by their own pure motivations and actions.

Its amazing how one person can make your see yourself, and particularly your flaws as starkly as if they were holding a mirror to your soul. Not through verbal admonishments but purely through their own selfless actions that, without intention, can highlight the distance by which one, and I in particular, routinely fall incredibly short. Knowing that I should listen more, judge less and once in awhile put myself into another girl’s Manolos just to see how really uncomfortable that last block might have been to walk.

Seattle consistently thinks in ways which seem so foreign and yet so dead on balls accurate that his statements routinely take my breath away. He relates to the world a completely purpose filled way that it leaves an immediate and meaningful resonance in, if not the soul, then surely the heart.

Frankly,