For the last four years, I’ve sat here at my desk staring out the ground-floor window onto the sidewalk of our apartment complex and gotten to know folx. Maybe “gotten to know” is a stretch. More seen and then made up story arcs about a bunch of people who walk by. Some of them I’ve actually met so the made-up parts are just peripheral, but a few are total strangers. There’s the thirty-something guy who cuts into our property to make the loop past my window each late morning (except weekends) moving quickly on his daily walk in his sturdy kicks, cargo shorts, T-shirt or hoodie depending on the weather, and baseball cap. He’s a fast mover. Two months ago a tiny human became strapped to his chest bouncing in time with his footfalls, little arms and legs waving around, seeing what he saw but completely different. I “congratulated “awwed” him (in my mind) and noticed he was moving slightly slower because obviously he was exhausted from lack of sleep. A couple of weeks ago, I was out for my stroll and a few blocks from home when I saw the two of them coming toward me and I thought how funny it was that he had no idea what a regular presence he was in my workday. As we passed, he said Hello. His voice was deeper than I expected. I said Hi back and kept moving while feeling warm&fuzzy and loving them both a little more. Then there’s the abuela who lives down the way and for the past years has rolled her shopping cart with her little dog perched on a bunch of bags stuffed inside. For the last month or so, the little dog had not been in the cart and that has made a chunk of my heart hurt a lot. I don’t actually know her enough to find out what’s up. It could be that the pooch is just more interested in staying home or some such but I’ve been sad about it nonetheless.

I also now know that I’m noticed around town given in the last week three people I don’t know have told me a variation on that topic. One woman whose shop I go into all the time on State Street (the main twee-yet-adorable stretch of stores in old-town Redlands) said, “I saw you walking down the street last week. I recognized you immediately.” I don’t know why that surprised me but it did. I know I’m not invisible. I’m aware my hair is a bluish-purple and cut in a particular way and that I really do have a certain style. I can own that. But I’m taken aback when people point these recognitions out. My response meter around this and compliments such as two instances of early-twentysomethings randomly telling me I have style, is a wonky work in progress. I find I don’t know what to do with my face or voice and have settled on either, “I do like to walk around here” and “thanks” depending on the category.

Having lived my formative adult years in Manhattan, becoming a flaneur became an entry point into my surroundings. Strolling the streets, noticing people and places, and all other peripatetic this&thats made me feel connected but also independent given it’s a well-known fact that New Yorkers don’t acknowledge each other. In fact, there are a whole bunch of quotes about that, none of which I can find presently (if you, excellent reader, have some floating at your fingertips, please do post them up here). Of course I’d take note of the regulars I saw on the streets of my neighborhood or in/on the subway. I mostly felt good about them and had stories made up about their lives. The Shopper (a woman I’d see on the A train on the regular with posh bags seemingly filled with new loot with her always vintage-fabulous); Edge-Cut (a woman of a certain age whose blunt-cut, two-toned hair I became obsessed with when I’d see her each weekend at the bookstore across from our apartment); Mr. Bow-Tie (self-explanatory); and so on. When one or more of the people I took notice of disappeared, I would worry. Think: Hope they’re OK, then look around for a familiar face to settle me down. Or maybe a new personality to begin stories about.

Here in the Redlands, my invisibility cloak is wholly imaginary. I mean, it always was but now I’m just made more aware of the fact. There I am with my headphones strapped on listening to a podcast (just finished Death of an Artist about the life, art&probable murder of trailblazer, feminist Ana Mendieta), book (The Freaks Came Out to Write, an oral history of NYC’s Village Voice), or some combination of Maneskin, Bowie, Roxy Music and strolling up into the park or down the shopping lane, stopping by the Sprouts or wandering through a thrift store. I’m noticing but not necessarily looking too hard. When someone tells me they’ve seen me, it occurs that in a couple of months I will not be here to be seen anymore. And I wonder, should I tell some people I’m moving? That lovely lady in the store I always go into that’s slightly too expensive for me but where I treat myself to their cool collection of cards and she always makes a note to say Hi, and I saw you walking, and I pull off my headphones to respond because it would just be rude not to. Or my favorite thrift store The Blues whose proprietor brings the energy of her Hawaiian roots completely into her surroundings and who, after the devastation in Lahaina, was a human connection to that heartache. I feel like these are people I know in a certain way. They remind me I’m not invisible. They may wonder what happened if I never turned up in their spaces after May 1.

So as much as I pretend that I just like to watch, not get too involved, I’ve put the lie to that by moving myself into the space, putting one foot in front of the other rotating inside the world. And as long as I continue to step out into new and old spaces, being seen and seeing will obviously continue to happen. A continuing investigation of how much space I want to take up in the world, how loud I want to be about it, how it can be up to me the level of involvement.

Maybe in future writing about the issue of how women feel moving around an observable space, the sense of being exposed in ways not always comfortable. A partial reason as to how I came to always wear headphones starting in New York so I wouldn’t hear the stuff tossed my way on the street. How that barrier of sound became something of an additional soundtrack I now really enjoy. All that has been a scratch at my brain idea for some time.

In the meantime, it’s raining, but still awesome people roam in the vicinity and so will I.