Ripple Effect: Tales of Strangers

January 9, 2026

Song Pairing

Thresholds? I turned to speak to my fellow chairlift-rider today and we began with, “crazy world, huh”? I have found this introduction to be common these days, often followed by “crazy people, right?” The mutual doubt is often how we meet and relate to each other in this global moment of unfathomable violation of human spirit and Earth. But we’re all spilling with enough news of corruption, so what I am here to mention today is on a vital and honest note. Here are a few reminders of the core goodness and uniqueness in human beings and their dispositions that have impacted me, whether or not they know it. 

The Volcano-Endorsed Barber

There was a barber shop in Chinatown I would walk by on my way to work. Walking through this section of Boston spanked my pretty, routine pressures and gave them a time-out. The tapestry of peeling, narrowness, and stacks of paper relieved a part of me sick of the sterile. Furthermore, the tattered and charming truth of our societal hive, our roles, gives, and takes. Families living in the back rooms of business, thirty-year-old posters, and exposed piles of operation, Chinatown admits to the natural, human element of, well, being human.

Exhausted by “respectable”, antiseptic, plastic-chaired gentrifications of chic boutique coffee shops and up-to-date vintage stores, strolling by this cluttered, genuine, exposed barbershop provided refreshing evidence of this messy, noisy soul we all lug around. Some of us refuse the entropy, and others embrace. Thank goodness for a display of common scatter, an indifference to the jumble, and priority of client value. It is possible for a job to be better performed in a non-performative space, just as a mediocre service can be concealed by fake chandeliers and swanky mass-produced art.

I really became connected to this smiley barber, whether or not he knew it, always a chatty client in front of him, snipping away before a large poster of a 2000s vogue white woman with digitally silky hair. He was the most natural-hair-chopper I had witnessed, casually sculpting someone’s scalp as easily as I throw tantrums. If I cut out a video of him snipping and pasted it onto an explanation of why the Rocky Mountains are so perfectly jagged, people would believe it. China has a tangled (pun intended) historical relationship to hair practices.

Apparently, during the Qian Dynasty, the first to politically require hair-cutting versus preservation of Han Chinese sacred long hair, there were panics of soul-stealing, believing that a person’s soul could be stolen by cutting off a piece of their hair. Such has me considering the weight of styles, and counting how many hairdressers may own a piece of my soul. Day after day the barber chinked at heads to modern perfection. Meanwhile his own hair looked like a tumbleweed braid of ink and smoke, the most “happening” and soul-nested hair-do of them all, if you were to ask any volcano.

The 3AM Uber Driver

It was 3AM and the city streets were quiet. Having already ordered a driver, I took the rare opportunity to address the deep night, admire the vacancy of rush, question my sexuality, play jazz drums with my feet, and daintily indulge in an alternate reality where instead of an uber driver, a giant, all-knowing owl would show up and whisk me away to a utopic land where you could talk to animals, emotionally intelligent men grazed in fields, there was no war, only love, and endless bowls of Vietnamese pho appeared in forests.

Blink blink blink. Slamming back to the reality of notifications, the solar system, and the loneliness epidemic, I wandered over to the car at the street corner. I froze. This was not just a car, it was a 70’s Cadillac, bursting with disco lights.

Not a giant mystical, all-knowing owl, but this will do.

I opened the door and hopped in. At the driver’s seat was a 75-year-old black man wearing a leather jacket and stylish shades. I said greetings and asked him if he was my chauffeur to an imaginary land where all was wild and peaceful. He shook his vibey head and said, “but this is close enough”. And continued to turn up his old alternative jazz.  

After a moment of jazz bliss and reasonable concern that this man was wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, we began conversing. I asked him how he ended up in Boston, and he began his wonderful tale of romance. 

He had immigrated to Boston from the Caribbean in the 70s and fell in love with the city. Attending a small church in his neighborhood, he became starstruck by one of the choir girls. Determined to win her heart, he joined the choir, even though he couldn’t sing. Windows cracked, the chilled, calmed Atlantic air breezed as I gazed at empty parks. His willowy hand twisted down the volume knob and generously offered me a sample of his wailing. I gently told him I can verify the “bad singing” part. 

Because of limited job opportunities and financial stress, he ended up reluctantly taking up work in Florida. Other than the egrets, he despised Florida and yearned to return to the many-seasoned Boston he’d grown so fond of. After a few years and despite the lucrative opportunity that drew him South, the Cadillac man migrated North once again. Immediately he went back to the neighborhood church, searching for his dream girl, but she was no longer there. He scoured the city, searched records, bought many pairs of tight patterned pants, and interrogated potential witnesses to her path.

One day, while drinking a cup of joe in a local cafe, he saw a photo of a church choir in the paper, and there she was, right in the center, engagement ring jolting off the page. He attended Sunday service that very week, professed his love, and promised he would buy a Cadillac (because she was his “American Dream”) if she married him. It took him a decade or two to sort the Cadillac deal, find the right shades, organize his library of divine pants, and admit that the choir attempt was a terrible idea. The rest is history.

After multiple awwwws, we arrived at my little studio apartment. I was disappointed the ride was over, but grateful to have listened to someone cascade so reverently for someone else. At a time when adjusting to Boston city life was taking a bit of a shrouded toll on my country spirit, it was wonderful to hear such a majestic man speak so passionately for the city that changed his life and offered him a soulmate. When asking him why he ubered so late into the night, he said, “I love her in light years, but that doesn’t also mean I need some space, if you get what I mean.” I requested an ethereal elixir of hope for a romantic outcome like his. He shook his head and said “but this is close enough” and turned up the tunes once again.

The Grieving Miner

On an airplane last winter, I was grateful to sit next to a grieving old man. At first impression, he didn’t seem frayed or grappling with a stronger strain of gravity. I was sketching, an activity I am typically drawn to while sky voyaging. I could sense the glint of his eye following my hand, and a kind of patience only granted to those who have anguished enough to realize the whims and forces of it all. He told me his wife, who had recently died, used to sketch, and he was pleased to simply watch the contours unravel at the adjusting angles of my wrist.

I always enjoy asking the elderly about how it felt to be young during their era of upbringing, the conditions of society, play, connection, love, and fear. The man was a miner in Butte, Montana at 16-years-old and later reinvented himself as a musician, and his words were sequined with a simplicity and hardship only recallable. I enjoyed hearing him speak of his travels, mistakes, and unconventional life, falling in love undistracted. He asked about my path, and I mentioned moving to the city to pursue an opportunity at an art school, my hope to carry remote places with me in my actions, words, and creations.

These days it’s easy to get on the plane and immediately turn inward. I was cocooning and circling in myself as I boarded this flight, disenchanted by the human species, flustered about all the Annieness to come. In an increasingly polarized social scape it can be hard to refute the idea that interaction with strangers exhausts rather than energizes. We chatted, to my surprise and at a respectful volume, for the entire flight. 

I was relieved to pause the factory of thoughts in my own mind and instead listen to another’s. We talked about countless topics, and hearing about his non-linear ventures, I finally asked him how he dealt with forging his own path, not fitting in, and not being seen. He said rather smoothly, “well, when you’ve been down in a dark mine shaft for a week you realize that it matters less to be seen and more to be felt.” 

The Makah Woman

Looking for a bit more serenity to level out our intense personalities, my friend Elle and I decided to get into “coasting”. The idea of backpacking and camping on remote, wild beaches seemed the epitome of such “calm”. But after stumbling on every sized rock possible, barely dodging tidal shifts, scaling unstable bluffs with huge packs, and confronting washed-up whales, Elle and I now challenge the dictionary definition of “coasting”. This bloggy moment of reflection is not to emphasize our marine chaos, however, but rather to mention the kindness of a Makah woman who picked us up as hitchhikers to our trailhead. She was coming back from the grocery store with her grandson. We asked her about how the area has shifted over time and the birds. The eagles have a distinct behavior in the coastal rainforest, garrulous, mischievous, and groupish. Every time we passed an eagle the woman would excitedly point them out, mentioning their messenger, wise qualities in Makah tradition. 

We made one stop, and the woman insisted on buying us frybread. We sweetly obliged, munching happily on the succulent, honeyed dough. For the rest of the ride, the woman continued to enthusiastically offer gifts, describe, and show us the land. It was a profound interaction with a member of a native community often segmented from dominant national considerations, especially in the narratives of our National Park system. We were both strikingly warmed by the soft willingness to invite us into the climate and see details of the land in a different way. She was glad to share with us. It reiterated to me, once again, the importance and respect of engaging with each other across cultural lines; that there is a difference between trespassing on heritage and being open to including it in your idea of life on Earth. The difference of intrusion versus open-mindedness here is slight but the reverential reverberations are massive, and now, more than ever, we must consider the truths of many ancestries. To give space for someone to speak requires that you are in range to listen.

After the rich journey with the Makah woman, we sat at an overpriced, nature-branded restaurant and ordered from the kid’s menu. We sat for a moment, trying to justify the cost of the energy we ordered and discussed the idea of signs. We all have our little symbols, ubiquitous collisions that remind us we are where we are supposed to be. For me, it’s owls and moonlight. For Elle, as she described, its hummingbirds. She then went on to tell me of a dream she had of a waterfall pouring straight into the ocean, and that this was where she felt she belonged. A hummingbird proceeded to buzz up to us, we swiped away some fiscal numbers, collected our things, and arrived at the trailhead. 

A mere three miles in, unaware of the treachery to come, Elle and I arrived at our first campground. Miniature, majestic islands of rough rock jar from the ocean, verdant and wrinkled, almost like green curly-furred creatures hardened long ago. We were so amazed that the only rational response was to run around like lunatics until we stopped heavy in our tracks. On the other side of the beach was a waterfall, cascading directly into the ocean.

A few extra mentions…

I want to take a section to recognize a few others over the last few years who have given me smiles.

Sabine, an intelligent Costa Rican/German woman who gave me a ride across the peninsula and ended up vacationing and exploring new beaches with me! We connected on many human platforms!

Thank you to the small-town ranchers who buy me chocolates. I have had a few instances, one in small-town Idaho and another in my hometown, where sweet, dirty-overalled, crow-cackling men have bought me a chocolate at the checkout counter. A lovely little offering in a sometimes politically divided-seeming environment.

The woman I saw crying at a cafe in Barcelona. There are lots of things that deserve tears! Thanks for revealing them.

Beth, the tour guide at the Louisa May Alcott house. An incredibly clever, passionate woman who honors the spirit of the Alcott family and the Transcendentalist movement through her efforts. A student of nature and disobedience, and one of the fiercest welcomes I have ever received in a place. Thank you for recognizing me!

The Guanacaste Gardener, who, grinning, showed me a huge, delicate, wonderful beetle.