In Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, multiple train lines and subways intersect, carrying over 3.5 million people every day. Waves of people shoulder past, hurrying, blurring by, always faceless. Once while transferring to another line, I met someone I knew. Just once, while moving through a crowd of millions, I saw a face I knew, one that knew me. Another time, a fellow foreigner stopped me to ask for directions. His was the only face I remember from that day.
One part of Shinjuku Station (courtesy of Wikipedia)
I move through life in a crowd of moments that are faceless, anonymous, and almost indistinguishable from one another. When I least expect it, one of them stops and looks me in the face, forever changing who I am. Sometimes it is a welcome and familiar face that helps me find my way or whispers words of encouragement; other times it wears the face of sorrow, speaking words I fear to hear. I memorize the contours of that face, take whatever is given, while all around the crowd never stops moving, in its urgent, restless rush. The moment that shatters my life is just another faceless person in the crowd to you, utterly forgotten, yet terribly unforgotten by me. And the moments that changed your life? To me, merely moments blurred into days, unmarked and unknown. We each carry our own calendar of joy and pain, of remembered days and moments, but most of the days are missing, torn off to mark the passing time.
We live our lives in moments, sought out by love, hate, hope, sorrow, comfort, happiness, or death. When you least expect it, a hand reaches out to grab your arm, or a voice speaks your name. You are pressed in on every side, where else can you go? You must stop, receive the word, receive the gift, you must face the moment; and you will remember that face for the rest of your life. Then you are swallowed up once more into that crowd, moving, ever moving, carrying your joy or sorrow home.
year-struck 
It is always a wonder when an individual is noticed within the masses–connection, communication. Your post made me think of Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” an image that has always intrigued me:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
I love that image, too. There’s something about being in such a large crowd, each person intent on their journey, pushing toward some destination, and lost to the others.
I am struck by the idea of a moment stopping and looking you in the face just so yo will remember it.
I lived in Japan after high school, and I remember one of my first impressions after I landed at Narita and left the airport was that Japan was nothing but a sea of people. Of course, I learned it was much more than that, nevertheless that impression has stuck with me. And as odd as it seems to compare the moments of your life to a sea of people, I totally get it.
I think it’s because out of all the moments of our lives, there so few moments that are truly memorable and still vivid in our minds. Because you have been in those huge crowds, maybe you can visualize it the way I experienced it.
In a world as crowded as ours, it is always such a delight to see a familiar face, even if it’s one I have never seen before. T
Sometimes the memorable moment does have a familiar face.
And in spite of the rarity of these moments of recognition or encounter in the sea of faces, I find myself always expecting to make those connections. On the subway in New York, in a crowded theater somewhere, in the train station in D.C., I look for people I know. Surely I DO know people in New York, and people in D.C., and people who go to the theater. Where are they? Hello! I KNEW I’d run into you!
There’s something hopeful and joyful about your expectation, RAB. I like that very much.
This is a nice reminder for me. I am forever walking with my eyes turned down, just trying to mash through the crowds. If I see someone I know, it is because they see me first. Something in my brain is unable to sort through that jumble of information quickly, so I pretend the information does not exist. I am certain I appear the misanthrope, but this could not be further from the truth.
I think certain moments in life make you look up, and grab you or shake your world with words or truth. Those are the times, the days, the hours you remember.
We seem to be on the same track today or perhaps parallel tracks. Only you write about it so beautifully, and because of this, your moments have reached out and grabbed each of us (I mean that as a huge compliment, not that you have groping moments :-)). Sorry could not resist a teeny bit of sarcasm. Hopefully, you know I love reading about your life, and I love the way you write about it.
Thank you, worrywarts. And maybe you are right. Perhaps at time, moments so grope, molest us, leaving us feeling used and broken.
You have a knack for making the reader feel exactly what you feel or felt.
Thanks, Susan. It’s surprising sometimes how similar we all are.
Yours is a face in the crowd, a hand on the shoulder that I welcome, that I am grateful crossed my path to introduce me to your warmth, wisdom, astonishing powers of observation and the poetry you have for showing the rest of us what you’ve seen. You are *not* anonymous, but a sought-for blessing.
Blogging has introduced me to some truly astonishing, talented people. You are one of them, and I too am grateful we have met.
You write so well…I am blown away.
I am one of those people who talk to anyone….just love striking up a conversation in a supermarket queue….people are so interesting!
Thank you for reading. My mom was the same way; she made friends with everyone, and people always poured out their hearts to her.
I am echoing Kathryn’s words as I sit here. And just now it occurred to me that as I drive down the road, in addition to counting everything I see, I am looking for familiar faces in cars that come hurtling down the road toward me no matter where I am at.
I’m so glad I met you too, Cyndi. We have become, I think, familiar faces to each other.
This is the post meant for two days ago?
No, that post is still wandering out in the back pasture. There’s nothing for me to do but sit here and wait for it to come home.
This is a powerful and beautiful post. It’s poetry too.
Thank you, ShimonZ.
This posted,which is beautifully written, stirred up many emotions for me as I remembered my own *moments*. Life turns on a sixpence.
I like your phrase, life turns on a sixpence. We never know what the next moment might bring; one second in time can alter our life forever.
hello, yearstricken,
i love this. “We each carry our own calendar of joy and pain, of remembered days and moments, but most of the days are missing, torn off to mark the passing time.”
happy weekend to you and your loved ones. 🙂
That’s an image that I have carried in my head for a long time — tearing off the days from those 365-day calendars and only leaving the ones on that were memorable. If I had one of those calendars for every year I lived, there really wouldn’t be that many days on each calendar.
Enjoy your weekend as well.
I just read WW’s post about the young F**ing guy she gave the banana. They also touched in a way that you describe so beautifully in this post. Thanks to you both.
Worrywarts’ post is well worth the read. She was the moment that young man needed. I hope he remembers her face as the moment when compassion and kindness stopped to speak to him.
http://worrywarts-guide-to-weight-sex-and-marriage.com/entries/
I’ve been thinking about things like this lately, too. In terms of memory, isn’t it so strange how we can’t recall EXACTLY what happens at a given time? For example, I can’t recall in exact detail the occurrences of the last sixty seconds. It’s so peculiar to think about: all the forgotten memories, the things that mean so much to us and the things we are excited about.
Time spent with people we loved and people that we’ve lost. Moments of our lives condemned to the vast chasms of subconscious memory.
It’s so bizarre! It makes me wish I had some sort of mental (permanent) notebook or rather, a scribe who documented every detail.
I suppose that’s why people write books and that’s why people blog – to document their thoughts and feelings before they are forgotten. Like trying to remember a dream.
I’m now no longer sure that this is relevant; still valid, though.
I like what you wrote here, olletron. I feel the same way: there are so many things I wish I could remember, but I can’t. Though probably some of the forgotten memories are best forgotten. I guess our blogs are one way of remembering.