The Rose

Instead of telling you all about what has happened in the last week like finding a new brave Japanese friend; crocheting twenty hats; watching a male friend pick up a gorgeous girl who in turn tried to pick up my sister; experiencing a smiling French boy called Surkin making a dance floor of people go wild; becoming mesmerized by the enthusiasm of the drummer in "The Midnight Juggernauts"; drinking way too much but ever so good Cooper’s Sparkling Ale; watching my sister trying to pick up a sexy bartender only to see him fall head over heals for her Aussie male friend; and finally even though I fell asleep on my desk yesterday at work from exhaustion, I went to the concert of "Arcade Fire" last night and came out more awake than ever before.

Well, instead of telling you all about these things I thought I would tell you about another of my favourite Unusuals.

I don’t have a name for him, this old man who lives on the same street as I do. He is probably around 65 years old, tall and very thin. His face is papery and lined, all the lines are vertical they start somewhere and all go straight down as if water has run down his face for a very long time leaving imprints. He has greyish eyes that are very alert and they look up from under very bushes white eyebrows, every hair in the eyebrows point downward as well so they form a little curtain from under which the eyes peep. To match his very white eyebrows he has a spectacularly bushy white moustache. The moustache is so big and since it also strays straight down it completely hides his mouth.

One morning as I went to work he stood in the tunnel that leads to the underground. This tunnel is one of the most uninspiring and windy places to stand in. It has a dirty yellow floor and even dirtier but glazed yellow tiled walls. The light is bright, hard and white. The length of the tunnel is about 30 metres and it leads into the ticket hall of the underground.

Well as I was saying, one morning at about 6:30 a.m. this man stood there, hands behind his back just staring straight ahead into the wall opposite him.
In the afternoon when I got back from work, he was not there anymore but the next morning - there he stood again, slightly rolling on his feet from heel to toe. He nodded to me and other neighbours whom he recognised.

This behaviour went on for about one week, every morning he stood in the windy tunnel, hands behind back and nodded to people passing by.

Then one morning he had a small keyboard standing next to him. He didn’t touch the keyboard, just stood silently by it.
For a few days he stood next to his keyboard not touching it until one morning as I was walking down the stairs to the tunnel I heard him tinkling on the keys, just one or a couple of tones at a time. Not a tune, just randomly plonking away. The man still nodded seriously to us neighbours as we passed by.

After another week he had increased not only his props with a small mat and a stool on which he sat, but by now he was playing melodies on the keyboard. Nothing too complicated, simple stuff like “When the saints came marching in” or “What a wonderful world”.

Also next to the old mans foot on the dirty floor lay a single red rose wrapped in plastic.

This old man stood in the tunnel every single day for about six months, playing the same tunes over and over again, seriously nodding to his passing neighbours and next to his foot lay the red rose wrapped in plastic.

Beautiful.