Living Strange

After my first class today, along with casual conversations with friends, I’ve been thinking about how much the environment in which you surround yourself can influence your state of being. For instance, the family environment in which you grow up in tends to be a large part of your preparation and overall attitude for life once you leave it. As I continue to live in this foreign country, in which many things are still unfamiliar to me from my normal environment, I have been seeking out people who seem to be what I view as an outsider, coalesce with their environment.
Today there was beautiful light. The appearance of the sun reminds me of being in Syracuse again; when the sun comes out, you notice it as if it’s been gone for a year. When the sun’s rays peak through the dark clouds, it seems as though it is merely pointing out the special things about this city.

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I met a man today named Phil James; he looked to be about fifty years old, but was probably only forty. Reeking of alcohol, he approached me outside of a pub from down the street as I was taking a picture of the BT tower. Quite close to my face as he began speaking, enquiring about my camera, I didn’t find him to be someone I should be alarmed by. Although, he had an intense manner to him, which made me more compelled to keep a conversation with him, rather than divert him off to another person along his way. After only two minutes of speaking with this stranger, he confessed to me that he thought I was someone “real.”
I can’t help thinking whether what he said was something he said to anyone who stayed long enough to have a conversation, or was he able to make an accurate depiction of a stranger in five minutes of conversation. I said thank you to him and then asked him he minded showing the tattoo he had on his wrist. It was an “Oasis” tag, a band from England that started in the early nineties. We parted ways as he winked at me saying, “I’ll see you again when I read about you making millions from you photographs,” and all I could think about was how real of a person Phil James was.