party lineI have had this idea for a long time. Years in fact.  I have always been fascinated by words I overhear– like the universe speaking to me. I am not schizophrenic; but I am hearing things. Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street, or passing through a crowded room, or store, and I hear something that catches my ear. Random fragments of conversation. I’ve often thought of collecting them and putting them down in a book –like street poetry, floating wisdom that drifts my way. Lifted from their immediate context, these words are suddenly unleashed. Potent. They may be words we need to hear in that moment. They may be words that just pull us out of our own little problems.

A few weeks ago, I was walking down Tremont Street in the South End and overheard a valet on the phone completely immersed in conversation; as I walked by, I heard him ardently intone, “I love you. I REALLY love you.” I was struck by his urgency.  Was he breaking up with someone? Or they with him? Or something else entirely– defending himself for some transgression? Who knows.  But I hear these things all the time– like little plays in progress all around me and for a second or two, I am pulled out of myself and into someone else’s drama. Sometimes these words are just odd or funny.

A friend of mine, recently deceased, once reported waiting at the meat counter for an order and heard the following from the back room, one guy yelling to another:

–“How do you get the toes off this thing?”

–“I chop’em off.”

Funny? Tragic? Gruesome? Depends.

So I’ve decided to report what I hear, here. You may recognize yourself.  Or it may speak to you. This is what I heard today walking down Boylston Street in front of Emerson College this afternoon. Young man on phone:

“Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you doing this to me?”

Stay tuned.