1.
I remember a few very similar incidences in the summer, when the sun etched shadows in the ground, that involved a strange figure approaching me, taller than me, sillhoueted by the sun.
I was walking along this street one late summer afternoon. The sun cast heavy beams into my eyes as I dragged myself uphill. A man appeared out of the corner, wearing dark sunglasses, masking the movement of his eyes underneath them.
He told me he was collecting money for a charitable cause (which cause, I do not remember). I stared up at him and did not say anything.
"Why do you look at me like that?" he asked. "With such fear in your eyes."
2.
This afternoon, maybe a few hours ago.
After the fortress, I decided to visit a small, hidden street where I had seen the Creepy Camcorder Dude for the third time. The uphill trek on this street was not as difficult as I had remembered it to be. I had started to exercise regularly in college, perhaps that was why. I looked around me. I remembered enountering the Creepy Camcorder Dude at the top of the hill.
I walked by an art supply store that I used to frequent. The traditional coffee shop I sometimes visited with my mother had been replaced by a supposedly trendy bar that only served beverages in glass jars.
I reached the top of the hill. Across the rotary, I could see that the sign for "Njamburger" was still there even though it had closed about nine years ago. The large outdoor market across the street was beginning to close up. Elderly women stood at the bus stop, hauling bags of groceries with them. Some of them had scarves wrapped around their heads - a very old fashioned style, something I remembering seeing my great-grandmother wearing in photographs.
I looked at one of the buildings across the market. It was pre-Revolution era with intricate details lining the windows and doors. An old man was leaning from his window, staring at the ground. A thick white beard covered his face and I could not tell whether his expression was one of anger, sadness or indifference.
I walked towards the bus stop and stood amidst the crowd of elderly women for a few minutes. I read a few e-mails about settling into my work place. It provided a list of popular tags for the types of moments that people wanted hidden. Of course the most popular tags were related to romantic and bathroom activities. However, the tags that stuck out to me were the #general or the #mundane tags. Those were applied to non-descript moments, where one was just waiting or carrying on a daily routine. Like grocery shopping. The elderly women had boarded the bus, the market had closed down and I was alone on the street except for the man with the ambiguous face, staring out of his window. I looked around. Nothing around me yielded the existence of the Creepy Camcorder Dude. I looked at the old fashioned security cameras perched on the roof of each building like gargoyles. Had they managed to capture him that one time he passed me by?
3.
Similar to the man soliciting for the charitable cause, I had run into the Creepy Camcorder Dude on this street during a hot, summer day in the early afternoon when the sun blinded my eyes.
I was walking uphill on my way to the art store and I could see a figure, silhouetted by the sun, swiftly approaching me.
As soon as he reached ten feet of me, I could see that it was the Creepy Camcorder Dude. He had a camcorder in his hand and stared directly into my eyes as he approached me. His expression looked hostile, but I'm not sure whether it was intended to be so. He walked past me, missing my shoulder only by a few inches. He passed me by and did not even turn around to look at me. Had he recognized me from the train? Does he do this to everyone? Is this just a #mundane moment for him?