Strangers to Ourselves

“Wither thoust go, stranger, in thy shiny car in the middle of the night?”

This is a slightly modified line from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Strangers and midnight, they complement each other. I still vividly recall Julia Kristeva’s piece on ‘strangers’ in her piece “Strangers to Ourselves”. In that writing, the bottomline of hatred and discrimination starts with being strangers. She is talking about race, of course.

I have a different version to tell, though, and I’ll stick to that midnight allusion. Of late, nothing could have been more intense and triggering than the events and realizations surrounding this musing. This is where strangers proved to be some kind of magnet that offers possible adventures, of heartless union, of mystical escape. A flickering moment, as one song goes.

It could have been in the most perfect setting. You’d certainly catch the stare that “knows” along that deserted hotel lobby in a strange city in the middle of the night. An instant attraction, a lonely room for either of you, and the need for a strange company. That’s all it takes.

You talk as if you know each other very well. You try to withhold as much information from him despite your perception of the other party as being “trusthworthy”. You’d never go out with an indecent person, you tell yourself, but that’s enough. You are all perceiving, but all cautioning on the other side. After coffee, you’d walk back to the hotel, to either of your room, and, again, in one flickering moment, two souls become one.

The hotel phone rings back at your room. It’s from the other room which you just left. The tone is sweeter now, you notice. There’s the temptation of being more familiar with each other now. But you try to shrug it off and believe that nothing special happened. It’s a strange, but still, an ordinary night, and you have your flight early in the morning. No nothing.

Along your routinary way, you meet such strangers. Even in the most unexpected places, you’ll find yourself exchanging those knowing looks. A few talks, and suddenly, the stranger is no longer a stranger. But you know that after that flickering moment, the stranger will have to remain a stranger. You’ve learned not to cross the line.

One thing even amusing is how persons whom you have had connections with can instantly become strangers. You look straight into their eyes and all you see is a stranger. Or, they can be the ones to see the strangeness in your own eyes. Or maybe both. Unexpectedly, there’s the relief in finding it. It’s back to being strangers, once again.

Too soon, “new” strangers will cross your paths to offer countless possibilities. But then again, you can always find yourself facing the most perceiving question, neither uttered nor answerable, because you realize that you are also a stranger to yourself.

“Where do you go, stranger, in the middle of the night?”