124. Letter to a Stranger – Colleen Kinder
Twenty years after the journey, she haunted his memory still.
Once upon a time, the travel writer Pico Iyer came to visit a writing class I was teaching at Yale. I’d assigned a bundle of his essays to my students, expecting that our distinguished guest would hold forth on his beautiful sentences. Instead, Pico went rogue, taking us behind the scenes of a reporting trip to Iceland.
He’d met a stranger—an Icelandic woman with whom he walked the streets of Reykjavik for hours. She was nowhere in the magazine story about Iceland we’d just read, and yet she’d informed every sentence he’d penned. Twenty years after the journey, she haunted his memory still.
Unable to help myself, I burst in with a question: Had Pico written this version of the Iceland story? The one featuring the stranger?
His answer was “no,” and it didn’t sit peaceably with me. Wherever in our minds, we stow misgivings about how we’re spending our lives, Iyer’s “no” harpooned straight there. I'd been a serial traveler for years, pitching articles set everywhere from a Chinese megacity to remote Nicaraguan isles. And while I was publishing these stories in impressive venues, always, there was a sense that I was neglecting some truer story: the one I hadn't gone seeking, the one shaped by serendipities and so often featuring a stranger.
The “Letter to a Stranger” at Off Assignment column was born shortly after Pico's visit because I couldn't shake the sense that something was off-kilter. Shouldn't there be a home for stories like Pico’s?
To that end, I challenged a handful of writers to pen a letter to a stranger. I remember so well the first missive that blipped into my inbox: a letter from Leslie Jamison, addressed to a drunk magician in Nicaragua she'd never been able to shake. More poured in—letters to an old man in Palermo, a film vendor, a bike lender, a hitchhiker, a lost baby. In all of them, resounding proof: that someone we meet just fleetingly can mark us eternally.
Six years have passed since Pico visited my classroom, and we’ve since published hundreds of “Letter to a Stranger” essays at Off Assignment, their global spread as astounding as their topical range. In last week’s beautiful missive, authored by New York Times 52 Places columnist Sebastian Modak, the stranger was—to our surprise and delight—a Siberian dog.
I’m now convinced that there is no exhausting the “Letter to a Stranger” form—that it can hold the innumerable ways that we touch and heal and hurt and enliven one another, way out there on the edges of our lives. I can’t wait to witness the latest proof from the Isolation Journals community, especially while this pandemic confines us all to our immediate circles, our germ circles. May this writing prompt take us well beyond that, if only through the channels of memory.
– Colleen Kinder
Prompt:
Write a letter to a stranger—someone you’ve met only in passing but still think about. Write to figure out why.
Grace Montenegro
Location: Ecuador
About: I want to remember this situation in the future, to remain humble and authentic
Age: 25
Joan Bancroft
Location: Denver, CO
Age: 72
Dear Stranger,
The first time we passed on my morning walk, I only noticed that you were a young man in a hoodie. It was probably dusky because I always walk very early. You were coming toward me with the hood on your hoodie up, baggie clothes, carrying your skateboard. No matter how safe I think I am walking in the dark, there is always a moment of question when a stranger approaches.
I don’t remember if we said, “Good morning”, the first or the third time our paths crossed, but once we finally did and you smiled, I knew it was okay. The old adage that a smile says 1000 words was true for our first interaction. The smile was sweet, brief, and reassuring.
We passed many more times that spring and I learned to recognize you from a block away, your skateboard, your east gait, your hoodie.
One day I saw the “Red Rocks College” on your hoodie. I had been to the campus off Kipling, not far from where we crossed paths. So, one day I stopped and you did too. I asked, “Do you got to school at Red Rocks off Kipling?” “I go to Red Rocks but at the campus on 6th”, a few miles away. “Oh, I wondered if maybe you were walking to school.” “No, I’m going to work at Walmart”, a few blocks away. I asked what he was studying and it had something to do with music and mixing.
I had taken a few classes at Red Rocks years ago to fill in a business degree with history and art so I could pursue a Master’s in Education. It is the epidemy of an urban community college, offering degrees, certificates, and skills programs. I loved the energy there and the classes I took were surprisingly enjoyable and informative. I was looking for something quick, easy, cheap and I still remember things I learned there in those classes.
Not too long after that conversation, you were gone. Maybe summer changed your schedule at work and school, maybe your family moved, maybe you got a car or a scooter. Like those classes at Red Rocks, I remember you and our brief “Good Mornings.”