created, $=dv.current().file.ctime & modified, =this.modified
tags:
related: boyfriend & Alterity
Commute
During my commute I was stuck in traffic at a red light on a four lane road. In this moment I was surrounded by cars on all sides. Due to the morning light, and the various tints, I could not clearly see through the glass of their car windows, to perceive a person inside. I realized that during my entire commute, with all of the people I passed and interacted with on the road - I actually didn’t see a human the whole way. Just cars.
Occasionally I will notice a car, particularly if it has some kind of distinctive detail. The only reason I recall is because of this distinctive detail on the car (such as a bumper sticker, or a strange design), but I must presume that if I am regular on my commute, at some point I’d be spending my commute adjacent to cars that I am regularly adjacent to. I just never notice. They remain strangers.
I understand that the amount of people that I can interact with and actually recall compared to all of the humans currently living is extremely limited. The vast majority of humanity are strangers and that’s all they can ever be. It’s incomprehensible.
Etymology
late 14c., straunger, “unknown person, foreigner, one who comes from another country,” from strange + -er (1) or else from Old French estrangier “foreigner” (Modern French étranger), from estrange. Latin used the adjective extraneus as a noun to mean “stranger.”
By 15c. as “not a citizen of a nation, not a member of a religious group, craft, family, etc.” The English noun never picked up the secondary sense of the adjective. Also from late 14c. as “traveler, transient,” As a form of address to an unknown person, it is recorded from 1817, American English rural colloquial. The meaning “one who has stopped visiting” (often with reminder to not be one) is recorded from 1520s.
Friends
It seems all my friends, particularly some of the closest have completely arbitrary origins. Granted, it’s not as if some mystical ceremony produces friends, or anything more can be expected - but it still is strange how such an innocuous interaction produces these people. Is it such that the strangeness of strangers isn’t any intrinsic part of them, the strangeness resides in allowing a stranger into your life, into your heart.
As an example, I have a close friend who I simply messaged out of the blue internationally. From this point, we would speak basically every day. Another close friend, I just spoke to before an exam as he sat by himself. I had the opportunity to not speak, but I spoke. Now we meet multiple times a year despite an hours difference in locations.
Would we have spoken if I hadn’t taken that chance? Perhaps, but also probably not.
I can also locate the stranger here. I presume, there’s that person, who I was sitting next to that I didn’t speak to. I instead spoke to my stranger-turned-friend. The stranger remained a stranger. I am thinking of them now but don’t know them.
Strangerification
In my Mixes I have many songs compiled into single, unfortunately mostly unlabeled tracks over the course of many years. Most tracks were special ones to me that I downloaded from smaller independent producers. The situation I often have now, is I’ll revisit these mixes and know the song intimately by sound but the link to whatever metadata (artist, song title) is either completely lost or impenetrable through the noise of subsequent song likes and downloads.
If I lost that mp3 file, the songs themselves would be rendered strangers once again. Since they are the result of smaller producers, their digital footprint is not as permanently secure as something that would be on Spotify. Likewise Shazam will not recognize them.