I bought a couple of used books today, fixed the earphone jack on my iPod, and went for a long aimless walk.
Ending up in Trinity-Bellwoods park in the afternoon, I assigned myself a project of talking to strangers. One trick is that people are almost always cool with you speaking directly to their dog. Dogs are pretty easy to win attention from, and it’s natural to segway from that into a discussion with a dog owner about their dog.
Part of me wanted to just blast familiar sound through noise-isolating headphones, but the prospect of having conversations with strangers had particular appeal while trying to combat with alienation of graduate school.
Over the span of a few hours, I had some kind of conversation with at least fifty strangers. A lot of it was about dogs, but I also met people making major life decisions, people with philosophical reflections on their life choices to date, one young man with several scientific toys and a fondness for the conservation of angular momentum, an aspiring welder, and two self-identified addicts who thought I look nothing like a police officer despite my hiking boots.
Early on, I met two actors practicing a sword-versus-dagger fight which will be part of a play performed on April 30th at the Revival Event Venue between 6pm and 9pm.
