Tempus Fugit

I look up from the magazine I’m reading at the touch of rain drops on my forearms. The sky is darker than the reflected light from the page, and my vision goes hazy around the edges as my eyes adjust.

This is what I imagine my vision might be like when I’m older, say, forty or fifty years in the future, and I look around, sort of taking it in; the details and the lack of details, the way the colors stand out against the dark.

A voice in my head, kind of resigned and longing, says, “Oh, It’ll all go so fast!”

Pivot!

At the top of the stairs, I grab the set of shelves we’ve been hauling up to our apartment and lift it out of Katie’s hands to pivot it onto the landing.

She looks up at me in mild exasperation. “You don’t have to do it all yourself,” she says.

“You’re right,” I say, after all the excuses have filed unspoken through my head and I’m left just with my pride.

Hebrews 13:2

We make eye contact as he’s coming down the aisle, and he comes straight into the booth and starts looking at Katie’s work.

It’s been a bit slow, so I’m glad for the business, but some things come to my attention that give me pause. One, he’s extraordinarily tan - every inch of his exposed skin is that particular shade of leather red that indicates excessive sun exposure over a long period of time on a white dude; two, he’s carrying a rolled up sleeping bag strapped to his back and nothing else - no backpack, no fanny back, none of the usual accouterments of the tourist or tech bro that frequents this side of town; and three, he kind of smells like he hasn’t showered in a while - not excessively so, but my nose is pretty sensitive these days, so I could tell.

On the other hand, his shoes were clean and looked pretty new, and his eyes seemed intelligent and mildly interested without looking fanatical or deranged, so I just say, “Hey there, how are you?” and he looks up from the piece he’s holding and smiles.

Look Up

My usual lunch spot in the park is overrun with children today, so I find a nice park bench out of the way and sit, while the air behind me fills with their shouts and playful screaming. I don’t mind the screaming because they’re far enough way that it all sort of blends in together into a nice wash of sound.

I read through Twitter, click over to Facebook for a moment (only to quickly click away in bored horror), then realizing that the sky has gone a little dark, I put down my phone and look around me.

A bank of clouds has passed over the sun, and the sky has gone a pearly, diffuse gray, so I watch the trees and the clover-covered hillside I’m sitting on, thinking about trees sinking fingers deep into the earth while I eat a PB&J.

Perspective

The train car reeks of rotting vegetables, like depression and anxiety given a smell that permeates the air. I look around me in disbelief, since normally a smell this pervasive and high-toned will attract notice, but aside from the car being a little less crowded than usual, people just stay in their conversations and reading their newspapers like no one even smells it.

At the next stop, I flee the rampaging odor to the next car, where I find three young men shoveling what looks like rice and chicken and beans out of aluminum take out containers and into their faces. The smell of food, just normal take-out from some bodega, while usually unwelcome, smells like manna after the catastrophe in the other car, and I settle into a seat directly across from them with a smile and a sigh.

Fitness

I’m sitting on a park bench, staring up into the trees as the breeze riffles absentmindedly through the leaves. Periodically, shorts-clad fitness enthusiasts run through the plaza, or pause to do stretches at the foot of the Prison Ships Martyr’s monument, or push ups, or leg lifts.

Of course they do this on the plaza where underneath are interred the bones of literally over a hundred thousand people who died centuries ago, and of course everyone dies and no amount of stretches or running or breathing exercises or cold exposures or anything else is going to prevent that.

I had a point, but I guess I’ve already made it, so that’s the end of that.

Mobius Train

The subway running parallel to us on the bridge goes slightly faster than we do, and the windows slowly cycle past us.

No one in the other car looks up this time, so I watch the riders in the other car in anonymity as they pass: readers, sleepers, people with headphones on, people standing and chatting like figures from a silent movie.

I get the peculiar feeling that I am outside the world, looking in, but that the train I’m looking into is actually my own, the one I’m in right now. For a brief vertiginous second, the universe twists around itself, and I am watching for my own eyes to meet mine, peering out from the train, watching for me.