You Must Have An Eye For These Things (A Tribute to Alex Ward)

The wait for the streetcar on 11th and Taylor is always interesting. Actually, the wait for any transportation device on any street corner in any major metropolis is quite interesting if you have the right eye. I often do.

I learned to have this eye for people from my good friend Alex Ward. Alex cannot enter any space or plane without examining it with a keen eye for the absurd or the out-of-the-ordinary. He catches things that, even in the strangest circumstances, lies not in the center of the situation, but on the peripheral.

I'll give you an example.

This last weekend at the Sasquatch! Music Festival, there were many weird people. In fact, everyone there is very, very weird. John's mom, Clare, asked him, "Did you see any weird people?" and I heard him answer, "Yeah, mom, everyone is weird." You just stop noticing.

But the second night, after being rocked by Public Enemy, Massive Attack, and others, we were walking back to our campsite when we saw this:

One young, white male standing completely still and holding a battery powered boom-box. Beneath him, was his friend, who was lying on the ground and waving his arms back and forth in the air and singing amorphously. We were all laughing at this because it was so typically absurd for the festival.

But Alex pointed out something else.

Deep in the distance, probably 100 yards away, he spotted a young girl sitting alone in the open field. She was sitting and dancing, which is basically the way people "dance" when they are too tired or drunk or all of the above. She sat out there alone, in the dark, just having a blast sitting and "dancing." Her body moved strangely, and being all alone, the site made you wonder so many things I don't have time to write.

This is my friend Alex. He's a professional when it comes to noticing the behavior of humans. Because he has done this since I first met him at 16, he and I have moments in our lives that we call "Ward Moments" or "Nye Moments," which all have to do with the strange things that happen on the fringes of society that normal people either wouldn't notice, or wouldn't pick out amongst the crowd. So often, we laugh to ourselves because no one else would understand. We love people running in street clothes and we love the way people eat burritos.

Because of my friendship with Alex, I don't just wait for the streetcar or eat my lunch on the Park Blocks alone, but I wait for the weird. We are very strange people. Everything from the way someone is eating to how they listen to their music to what location they are in that is in connection with what they are doing. I like to watch people be people and I have Ward to thank for that.

But sometimes these things are just handed to you. Sometimes you don't look, you don't ask for it, but people identify you as a person they want to reveal themselves to.

That's what happened this morning. I'm waiting for the streetcar when a round man in hiking boots, short cargo shorts, and a huge hoodie approached me saying, "Can't believe those library security guards wear bulletproof vests."

"Yeah," I said.

"They didn't have to do that when my grand-daddy was alive," he said. "They used to round up the homeless guys and ship 'em out to build all the state parks we enjoy today. They'd teach 'em a trade and sober 'em up. The government did good things for them and they were thankful. You can't do that anymore, it's all about meth and cocaine." When he says, "cocaine," he emphasizes the second "c" and lets the rest of the word fall off.

"It's those [expletive] chemicals. Nobody wants to grab a beer anymore, everyone just wants to get high," he concludes.

I'm interested now.

"I see what you mean. It's more difficult to sober up and teach a man a trade when he's chemically dependent on something like meth. It's terrible." That was what I decided to add to the conversation, and that's what ended the conversation. Or at least I thought.

The man and I both get on the streetcar, take standing positions next to one another. It's quiet for a long time as I looked around the streetcar for the unusual, but he beat me to it.

He points with his index finger down to a pair of galoshes warn by a young urbane girl.

I give him a look.

"Where I come from, you wear those boots to slop pigs," he said quickly.

"Yeah," I chuckled.

"That chick wouldn't know the first thing about sloppin' pigs," he continues. When he says "sloppin,'" he gives his inflection some grunt, which seems to catch the attention of the bystanders. I think she can hear us because she sort of looks around to see who's talking on the silent morning streetcar.

"Crazy world," he says.

It is a crazy world, I thought as he cleared his throat at an inappropriate volume. And I have Alex Ward to thank for teaching me to notice that this world we live in is as serene as it is chaotic, and that, my friends, is precisely what makes it so beautiful.