People Watching

Like a painter that goes out into the streets and cafes to capture the pictures of the people around him, so I as a writer find that often I am most inspired when out in the world among people.  Watching their detailed interactions, the nuances of the relationships, trying to capture the moment and the thoughts from their expressions. 

People watching is something I've always loved but I think years as a script supervisor have honed my ability after spending all day watching actors live or on a monitor, seeing one person's ability to state a line clearly and communicate a specific emotion or other actor's inability to emote a most basic line in a way that seemed remotely natural, let alone believable.  

Perhaps that's inspired me or shaped me to write.  Watching for so long people in false situations, I find it now so much more interesting to see the real life dramas that take place on a minute scale in the real world.  

The woman sitting with a laptop at a table outside a cafe, her dog tied at her feet, drinking tea, watching the world and writing at the same time would probably be something I would find fascinating to watch.  If that person wasn't me.    

And so today I'm writing what I'm seeing.  

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A cow stands on the corner of the square, greeting pedestrians as they go by, handing out something.  The mascot seems familiar, as if for a local ice cream or dairy company, but the cow seems less than comfortable with her job.  Not ill pleased, exactly, but a little self conscious.  As perhaps one would be as a relatively small person in a cow suit on the sidewalk in a square full of people.  Though I've never seen a self conscious cow before.  

A man sits at the foot of a tree, leaning against his bike which leans against the tree trunk, his dog at his feet, rolling a cigarette and talking to a fellow biker, a female dreadlocked bohemian.  The man cracks his beer as they chat and she opens a letter.  

Early Start by Richard Burel

Tourist and locals alike pick over the fruit and vegetables at the farmer's market. Comparing the nectarines.  This one?  Or that one?  Does it have a bruise?  The girlfriend checks inside the paper bag to see if she approves with the boyfriend's selections.  He puts one back and she selects another one and they move on down the line, reviewing other options.

A few teenagers sit on a bench, chatting and looking at their iPhones.  They smile but not laugh.  The three girls sit together sharing one phone as the boy gets up with his and stands in front to better chat with all of them.  

A man sits on a bench, his backpack next to him, enjoying an alfresco sandwich and soda.  Comfortable in his skin...he people watches even as he is being watched. 

Two young blonde women sit at the cafe drinking coffees, gabbing.  One has sunglasses on her head, artfully placed as to not mess up her hair.  She gesticulates as if telling a story and the friend seems rapt.  It's not funny, but engrossing.  Is it the end of the story or an update to a previous one?  

Two guys join alfresco man on his solitary bench.  He moves his backpack over, but keeping it on the seat to separate him from the other two.  It's a small bench for three good sized men and momentarily awkward, but they settle in.  Alfresco man stops people watching and pulls out his iPhone as if to define that he's definitely on his own and not with them.

A young mother with magenta hair wearing an ill fitting, mismatched track suit pushes a pram through the square, trailing after her even younger looking, head shaven, t-shirt wearing partner.  She seems to be on the verge of yelling at him and he knows it, walking faster ahead, turning back to answer her only when he has to.  She stops halfway through the park to hike up her sweat pants and continues on. 

Tree Shadows by Adebanji Alade

A young couple stops in the middle of the square, carrying overnight baggage and a camera and appear to not exactly know where they are going.   They turn and head to the cafe, seemingly having made their choice for an afternoon snack. 

A young girl in a floaty floral spring dress cools herself with a princess shaped electric fan.  

An elderly couple walk arm in arm slowly through the edge of the park, observing the people at the produce stand.  He in a blue and white striped oxford and she in a red and white striped t-shirt with matching white caps; they seem ready for a visit to the seaside, dressed in summer nautical colors, though the seaside is miles away.  He is mildly stooped, seemingly too much so for what doesn't seem a truly advanced age.  

A double decker local bus carefully threads through the street around the park, momentarily interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic.

A woman in a medical uniform gets up from a bench, reaching behind for the hand of her companion.  They walk off casually, hand in hand, chatting and smiling, enjoying each other's company. 

A man glides his bicycle deftly into the rack amongst the others chained up and parked.  He locks it efficiently and walks off down the road. To the pub?  To the store?  He is determined and purposeful, a goal in mind. 

A small terrier puppy yips at the corner of the cafe, realizing he had been momentarily ignored and hopeful not to miss his scrap of leftover cake. 

A young woman in hen party bride gear, complete with sash and veil and fancy embellished sunglasses, walks into the square.  She is tall, elegant and blonde, thin and prettily dressed, surrounded by friends, most at least 3 inches shorter, each wearing light summer dresses and plastic leis around their necks.  They stand in the corner chatting as if deciding where to go next.  What to do?  So many options.  It's early, only 3:00, so too early yet to hit the bars, but, then again, you only get married once.  Hopefully.  They slowly wander a few feet off to the corner, not quite yet decided, still on a lumbering exploration.  A friend points down one street, but no decision is made.  Are they lost?  Suddenly another girl comes down the corner street, wearing a similar lei and waves at them.  They recognize her and wave back and immediately the group strides off purposefully toward her.   She knows where they're going and they follow her off out of the square.  So the hen party officially begins.   

The puppy whines again, tail wagging, looking at the people walking in and out of the cafe door, hopeful a piece of cake will drop and he will be gifted with a treat.   

Kingsmeade by Shirley Toogood

Two young men, one heavyset with silver earrings and carrying a large bag, the other tall and lean, wander through the square, chatting amicably. Along with their bags they carry the easy air of student life.

The teenagers on the bench have been joined by even more teenagers.  They have multiplied like rabbits in only a few minutes.  They laugh, showing each other their shopping.  Are they telling adventures of their day?  They don't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere and instead are working on perfecting their skills at the age old teenager pasttime:  loitering. 

At the same time a large group of teenage tourists, accompanied by an occasional harried looking chaperone, walk en masse down the corner of the square.   

A man sits with his sons on a bench, having a snack, observing the brave pigeons coming towards them.  The older son, standing up, stamps at a pigeon to scare it away.  The mother comes and sits next to her husband, sharing the seat companionably.  As the father speaks, she laughs naturally and gaily, a wide open smile, her head thrown back.   The younger son throws a treat to the pigeons who rush in and attack the lone potato chip.  He is entertained and throws another one until the flock becomes overwhelming and the the big brother steps in again to shoo the birds away.  The snack done, they get up and wander off, the younger brother dawdling behind as he finishes the last of his chips.  He throws the bag responsibly in the bin as he walks away, hurrying to catch up to the rest of his family. 

An elegantly middle aged Asian woman takes the bench they were sitting on and calmly waits.  For what?  She is dressed in all black and everything mid-sized:  a 3/4 length light cotton shirt, mid-length black trousers and gold shoes with a medium sized brown leather purse slung over her shoulder and her moderate length hair casually pulled back in a clipped ponytail.  She observes the birds for a moment out of the corner of her eye, then looks back up and stares off.  Is she waiting for someone or just waiting for time to pass?  She is calm, unhurried.  Her hands rest patiently on her lap, her legs crossed casually.  She sits quietly and still.  Not observing.  Thinking?  Occasionally she seems to focus outward but then her gaze turns off again and she is lost in her thoughts once more.  Suddenly she sees something, or someone, and gets up with purpose and walks off. 

A middle aged man in a white and blue striped oxford shirt and well pressed salmon colored shorts shops with a basket at the farmer's market.  He scans the vegetables, thinking, then picks a large cucumber off the rack.  He continues to look around, as if creating a menu in his head, filtering, choosing, selecting, eliminating.  He hands his basket to the seller, then stands, his right hand resting on the top of his head and yawns, waiting patiently for the total and his bag of completed purchases.

The man with the bike has returned.  He unlocks it and sets off across the park in the opposite direction from whence he had come.  Where has he been?  And where is he going?  Continuing his journey or ending it?  His glasses, balding head, beard, shorts and golf shirt make him an unlikely candidate for a cross country trek; more likely a environmentalist professor biking home, running errands while saving the planet.  

A maitre'd comes up from the stairs of a subterranean restaurant at the far end of the square to rearrange the placard board outside advertising the restaurant's existence.  He looks around at the people momentarily as he adjusts the sign, angling it for the best view from the entire square, as if wishing he could stay in the sun just a moment longer.  He reluctantly turns and heads back down into the caverns of the restaurant, a unenthusiastic nocturnal creature.   

The man in the salmon shorts takes his purchases to a bike, wanders with it to the corner, starts to mount it but then reconsiders.  He walks the bike across the street, over the pedestrian-heavy corner and onto another road.  Finally, he gets on his bike and slowly starts to creep his way up the hill.  

A muscled man in his 30s with a backpack, laptop bag and shopping tote from a clothing store strides quickly and purposefully across the square.  His sunglasses hide his eyes.  The faded eagle tattoo on his arm is in stark contrast to the bright blue of his striped polo shirt.  

A community worker enters the square in his neon yellow vest with a new garbage bag to replace one in an overflowing bin.  He moves slowly, as if happy to do his job today outside in the nice weather.  A car going around the square stops and asks directions, which he happily obliges, pointing the driver around the corner.  He walks around the square, carrying three large bags of rubbish, using his metal claw to pick up the bits that lazy people have dropped here and there.  He is thorough and efficient, unhurried but not lazy.  His movements are of habit and routine, but without the impression of any sense of shame or resentment.   He focuses on what he is doing but also at the same time manages to take in his surroundings and observe.  Watching the garbage and watching the people. 

A group of helmeted lady bikers stand on the corner next to the coffee shop, deciding what to do next.  The tangle of wheels and spokes, chains and people take up a section of the corner, but they are oblivious to the pedestrians trying to make their way around them. 

A elderly black man with a can of beer in his hand wanders around talking loudly to unwilling strangers.  Some acknowledge him, some ignore him.  He asks a middle aged woman for the time.  He asks several times, each time more loudly.  She looks over her shoulder and doesn't respond.  He moves on to a group near the bikers who seem to know him as if he's a local and a regular, as are they, though they come to the square with different intentions...and beverages...in mind. 

11am Kingsmead Square by Peter Brown

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Just when I think there are no more people to watch, to observe, to notate, to write about, another interesting character comes along.  Someone else whose body language and actions are curious, compelling and distinct.  It reminds me that there is beauty and fascination in the normal, in the everyday, in the plebian as much as there is in the extraordinary and unique.

And so, as I walk away from The Society Cafe in Kingsmead Square in Bath, somehow I feel as if I've met all of these people, if for only the briefest of moments.  That by watching them I've gotten to know some tiny, interesting fragment of who they are.  And at the same time I wonder who was watching me?  And what, watching the woman sitting in the corner with the laptop, a now empty pot of tea and an obviously hungry dog, would they be thinking?

Leap Into a New Year....

On the eve of another new year I can't help but look back in wonderment at what a difference a couple of years can make.  Two years ago this time I sat at my parents' house on the couch and asked them if they would look after Otis for 6 months so that I could sell all my worldly possessions, leave my entertainment career in L.A. behind and move into a house in the middle of nowhere in England, a little cottage on the estate that I'd never seen before.  

I am a huge fan of leaps of faith.  The bigger the better.   But even for me this one was a doozy.

To be fair, it wasn't exactly the first time I'd done this.  I'd dropped a job at Microsoft to move to New York and be an actor.  A few years later, I listened to my heart and pitched the acting career and followed a short, slightly twisted path into script supervising and a life in L.A.  But each of those leaps had been, in my view at least, wildly successful.  Not necessarily the outcomes I'd dreamed of on embarking – I didn't win the Oscar I set out thinking I wanted – but they were life changing and made me stronger and self sufficient and shaped me for the better in more ways, significant and subtle, than I think I could ever really name. 

I do think that taking the leap becomes easier the more you do it.  You become braver.  You see that there's something to be earned, and something to be learned, whatever the outcome might be.    

I jokingly say that my parents were supportive of everything we did as kids as long as it wasn't illegal, but there's a huge kernel of truth in that.  As the child of two adventurers, a sailor who has been around the world at least twice and a former nanny who crossed the ocean from a small island in Finland to live in New York City, following your dreams and being willing to make huge, albeit calculated and educated, life changes was somewhat the backbone I think of what you could call a family life philosophy.   Perhaps even family lore.   So it never occurred to me not to go or that they wouldn't want me to go.   You can always go back.  You can always return to the status quo.  But if you don't take the risk, you don't get the reward.   

If you never buy a lottery ticket, you'll never win the lottery. 

One of the things that I've had to learn to rely on and to trust, most importantly of all, is my own intuition.  Female intuition or just, perhaps, human intuition.  Whatever its source, through the years I've learned to believe in my own instincts.  To have faith in myself.  In my intelligence.  In my own abilities.  In my stamina and  resourcefulness, to deal with what comes at me and to look for new opportunities to grow and prosper. 

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade there's a moment where Indy realizes that one of the tests to get to the grail is to take a leap of faith.  Step onto a bridge that he can't see but he is sure that is there.  In his case, there's both a mental and physical leap to be undertaken, but any leap of faith is a decision to believe in your own judgment, that what you believe to be true is true and what you are doing is the right choice.

And having faith in yourself and taking big risks are what dreams are made of.

Here, now, it's both fascinating and revealing for me to look back and see how right that choice was.  Two years on, I'm challenged, interested, enthralled, curious, motivated and excited about where my life is, on both a personal and professional level. As if all the experiences of my life before this point have been a set up to get me to where I am at this moment, eager to move forward and see what the next adventure will be.   

So, as my friend Molly recently said, let 2012 be the year of doing. 

Let's see what we can achieve when we take a little leap and have a little faith...in ourselves. 

Who needs an umbrella?

The weather this last week in England has been a chaotic, ridiculous, glorious mess.

First it's windy,  then it's hailing, then it's beautifully sunny, then it's a torrential downpour, then sunny again with a chance of rainbow.  It's warm enough to walk outside in just a sweatshirt but an hour later you freeze in your winter coat.  

And I love it.  Every second of it.  My only wish is that we could get a little thunder in there to complete the package presentation.  

I love the changeability on a moment's notice.  The unpredictability of what will be next.   I sit inside at my desk and laugh, watching the dark clouds roll across the sky, dropping the afternoon sunlight to a dusky blackness, unleashing their havoc and then disappearing again in another breath. 

Four and half years of living in Los Angeles was four and half years of living without any variation in the weather.  Every day was like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day - the same sunny blue skies with wispy white puffs of overly cheerful clouds floating through.  The last year I lived there it didn't rain from February to August.  Not a drop.  There were four days in June that were slightly overcast and hinted at a potential drizzle, which those of us from out of town anticipated eagerly, only to be bitterly disappointed by the return once more of those boring blue skies.

During that last year I heard and became obsessed with the song "Grey in L.A." by Loudon Wainwright.  As he so eloquently put it, "When it's grey in L.A. I sure like it that way 'cause there's way too much sunshine 'round here.  I don't know about you, I get so sick of blue skies wherever they always appear. "  

Don't get me wrong.  It's not that I don't like sunny days.  They have their time and their place like everything else.  I like sunny days when there's a flea market or a wedding or a festival.  I like lovely warm, cloudless days picnicking in the park.  But as much as I don't want rain every day, sun every day is not just boring.  To me it's soul crushing and uninspiring, and drains away my energy and ability to think and create and dream.  Without variations in the weather what do we have to look forward to, to talk about, to wonder about?  If every day is predictable on such a basic level, the rest of your life takes on a monotonous color, like a series of paintings only painted in yellow and blue.  Much as you might like those colors, you occasionally want to look at something else. 

There's a Ray Bradbury short story called All Summer in a Day about a group of kids in a classroom who live on Venus where it rains all the time except for one hour every seven years.  Most of the children have never seen sunlight except for the one girl, a recent transplant, who remembers living on Earth and seeing the sun.  The kids tease her, taunt her and lock her in a closet...and then the sun comes out for an hour and they play outside...forgetting they'd shut her away.  They remember her only after the sun has gone and the rain has once again returned.  

My days in L.A. I often felt like that girl, except the opposite.  Surrounded by days of neverending sun, barely remembering what rain smelled like, tasted like, felt like.  With the lyrics of the song "MyTime of Day" from Guys and Dolls ringing in my head, "And the smell of the rainwashed pavement comes up clean and fresh and cold," I dreamt of that scent, that metallic, minerally smell of the sidewalk as the warm summer rain begins to sprinkle the dirt away.   

I love rainy days.  Misty grey to a torrential downpours.  Perhaps it's growing up in Seattle, but I know many native Washingtonians that think sun every day would be fantastic.  I admit I prefer to be inside when it's raining or in a car or in a tent, listening to the rhythmic pinging on the window or roof.   But give me a booming, window-rattling thunderstorm and I'm a happy girl.  

Otis, on the other hand, isn't too thrilled.  As he really doesn't like getting wet, he's not too fond of the rain, even in his bright yellow raincoat.   

Well, can't please 'em all.

I Am...For Bath.....

 I love my little village.  My own little Brigadoon, I've called it in the past.   I have fantastic neighbors.  A great pub with colorful souls.   A sparkling brook that trickles behind my house.  And a castle just down the street and around the corner.

Did I mention there's A CASTLE.

As a kid I definitely thought about living in a castle.  I mean who doesn't?  I think most little girls think about it at some point.  Living in the castle with their handsome prince wearing a big pink pretty, pretty princess dress and the world is perfect.  

When you're nine.

My adventure in England has taken a wide variety of twists and turns.  I started out in The Little Cottage on the Estate.  I currently live in The Little Cottage in the Village.  

And I plan to move to....The Little Georgian Flat in the City. 

I'm like Laura Ingalls Wilder's modern day English ex-patriot equivalent.  

The reality of a being single woman in her late 30s in a small village has been impressed on me more and more lately as people who have been important in my life this past year have slipped away, only to expose the holes in the theory that life in a village is perfect.  It is perfect.  If you're retired.  Or raising kids.  Or a poet.  Or someone looking to hermit away from life and be a cat lady. 

I am none of those things. 

I fell in love with Bath the first time my friend Les took me there last year.  He took me to all his former drunken haunts in the city, meeting up with a great group of his friends, and within seconds I wanted to live there.  But the idea of leaving my little haven, the place of respite I'd found after the craziness of first arriving here and having everything thrown into chaos, was a difficult one to stomach.  

But as the days have moved on, I've realized that life in Nunney doesn't change.  It's lovely.  As always.  It's friendly.  As always.  There are always people to chat to on the street, always friends in the pub to share the day's events with, always company for a cheerful supper.  

But, like Brigadoon....not many other people come here.  

To be fair, we do have a good amount of visitors.  Walkers who come to explore the trails of the Mendips.  Parents who bring their young children for an educational day out for the 20 minute walk around the castle.  People from neighboring villages venturing "out" for the evening.  Men who work for the quarries that come and stay at the pub for a night.  Some even become semi-monthly regulars.   

But the village, the core, the people you meet daily, the people who you know and who know you, stay the same. 

I grew up in a small town, an island, and thought I would embrace small town life easily as it was something I'd known and loved.  But nostalgia is a different thing from reality. 

The reality is Nunney has become my British home town.  The place I can go to and know in my heart that I'm welcome.  Step into the gossip should I choose, step out of should I not.  I know the people and the dogs, the houses, the roads and the trees.   

But it's time to fly the coop.

I love my hometown of Bainbridge Island, Washington.  Like Nunney, it's an idyllic place, perched just across the water, a 30 minute ferryboat ride away from downtown Seattle.  In the twisted turmoil of trying to figure out where I belonged, knowing I didn't belong in Nunney but not really knowing where I was supposed to be, I thought, "Bainbridge." 

But that would be the end of the story. 

I'm not ready for the story to end. 

And the reality, as I said recently in a conversation with my mother, was that after the magic wore off of being "back home" again, what would I be doing there?  Where would I be?

I have lived in New York.  I have lived in LA.  And there were reasons I left both.  In some ways both were too big for me.  Too much.  Nothing you could get your head around and embrace.  Nothing tangible.  I want to know when there's a new restaurant opening in town...I don't want it to be one of 200 new restaurants opening that day....but I don't want it to be the only one that opened that year either.  

Since I first went to Bath last summer I've spent a fair amount of time there.  I've introduced old friends to it.  I've met new friends.  I've fell in love with restaurants and shops and parks and I think I found that place, that singular place, that I've been searching for.

It's not Bainbridge.  But like Bainbridge, or Nunney, I could walk across it in a day.  It's not New York or LA, but like those cities there's something new, something happening every night.  Restaurants and theatre and music and people.   And life.

And so I've notified my landlords, who optimistically are putting my current house on the market to see who else wants to buy this little gem on the brook with the ancient walled garden.  My cottage that is older than the United States.   That has sheltered me.  And protected me.  And now needs to let me go.

I'm looking forward to moving and feel as if I almost belong to Bath already, in a way that I don't think that I've felt I belonged to any city since I left Seattle 12 years ago.   I wonder sometimes if this is what I've been looking for in all the travels and all the years of adventuring.  Stay tuned. 

What's funny is two years ago my brother got married in beautiful house in the village of Porlock, a really, REALLY little but lovely place on the Exmoor coast, looking out over the bay to Wales.  On the way back to London, driving with my sister Megan and her family, who live in Sweden, we detoured for my first ever view of Bath.  As we drove away, remarking on my newly acquired Finnish citizenship, Megan said, "Just think....anytime you wanted to you could live here."

And now...I will.