Goddess of light

I walked with steady steps in bright sunlight, the low sun at my back could not radiate through the bundling that zipped up to my chin. My stocking cap and woolen mittens were not fashion accessories and even unbundled I wouldn’t grace the cover of a glossy fitness magazine.

But definitions are often too narrow. I didn’t think myself unfit for yet other unleading roles – so many of them unthinkingly neglected by harried people, narrowed by yet other people’s harnessed minds.

And still the frozen concrete sidewalk easily held my own weight. My load was not especially wide. And if I were to unbundle my mind, it wouldn’t just be my body that I was taking along for a meander.

Truly, the bending Kaw River is a sight. But towards and along the way, there are sights uncountable. Even the weather changes from day to day. And even the day changes from dark to light. And as if that weren’t enough, sometimes the unexpected passes you by at a run.

Near the back of my mind I heard footsteps pounding – though not too heavily – coming closer and closer behind me. Then a young girl jogged past my left shoulder and ran on out towards my memory. I pondered. She was surely more a girl than a woman, one so very young relative to my own age. The low, warming winter sun tinted her light brown hair warmer, waving in waves at me as her own much lighter form receded. Lithe, she was. The sidewalk not giving even a millimeter at each footfall. I could see by the tan tails of the long woolen coat flying out at her knees that in spite of the cold she must not have bothered to button up.

Yet what drew my attention as I mesmerized in the moment was her back pack. Likely, she had been merely running along leaving Central Middle School, which I had passed a few short minutes earlier, her books and homework carried on her back. Yet that backpack so sparkled. So many uncountable sparkles kindled in my eyes. Sequins and spangles and so very many other circles of glittery plastic all stitched onto every available tough nyloned space.

But how could there have been sparkles at all without running girls and setting suns? And surely no blazing sun actually entered my mind. Those flashes were but reflections from an exceedingly distant burning - photons passing through uncountable miles of empty space, finally bouncing back and finding my pupils, then lodging in retinas and then further handing off some message to the organics and nerves well within, only ultimately sparkling light a cross pitch black synaptic clefts.

And then I thought for a split-second – then several erratic longer ones - as each bounding step took her farther and farther away from me. I wanted with all of my beating heart to run after her. I wanted to hear from her lips about the spangles. I wanted to see if her eyes were blue or brown – or perhaps colored some color name as yet undefined.

But then she would hear me coming, heavy steps and heaving breaths. She would turn and see a heavily bundled man – an abominable bumbling nyloned sidewalk stranger bearing down – the well-hidden human deep beneath my brown down coat. Or more simply, she would turn to see a large man, many times her young age, face red and straining. How could she possibly see in her own unexpected imagination, an overgrown boy who only wished to know if her backpack had come that just way with the spangles, or whether she had stitched the sparkles on herself with the fingers of a goddess.

I walked on.

Reality hugger

From this side of the Kaw River, the tree trunks on the other side extend up into the air and also down into the water, the surface hardly impedes their passage. A thick and rough line of a bank of green and drying grasses marks a boundary.

Why should one reality be more real than the other?

I could walk across the bridge, step closer and put my hands on the trunks growing up into the air. That would be something. But the trunks that were apparently growing down into that other reality will have vanished from my earlier vantage point from across the river. Are they gone, or what if I simply lack the ability to penetrate the surface of what I have always called a reflected reality. If I stick my arm into the water, it will only get wet.

This reality where I stand now seems so much more tangible. The rock I sit back down on is a hard seat. There are sounds waving into my ears, birds that I imagine but cannot see. Waves on the river, smoothed by strong current. White foam on chocolate water, swirling, reflecting a world that I, myself, am immersed in.

Some days, sometimes at small moments of time at a time, I wonder about the surfaces that divide realities. This world up here has seed heads of grasses along my path. A ladybug minding her business. Bindweed, with its miniature morning glory white flowers, twines.

My hands – the whorls on my outstretched fingertips - feel. The breeze slips passed my cheek. Maybe it will rain from the clouds, fuzzy gray, overhead, and I will get wet.

I could swim across the river from here. And get wet. Maybe this river is too wide for me.

Is everything like that – life and death?

This world seems real enough. I can quench my thirst with ice water. I can bite into a sandwich.

But what if you look into my eyes, past the surface into an inner other world. What do you see? Am I your illusion? Are you my reflection?

I can hug my arms around your body. That is something.

Connecticut St. Walk

YouTube slideshow with commentary - Mostly houses and porches - and the remains of the day - along Connecticut Street. ~ 4 min

Hard mercy

I was walking up the alleyway, as I usually do. A squirrel in the prime of his life, lay dead in the packed snow before me. I nudged it to the edge with my shoe, on to a frozen patch of grass, so that the squirrel would not get flattened. But the squirrel was already dead.

I walked on.

Then soon again, I was walking on a bright and warm day – for the still of winter. As I approached the spot in the alleyway, I saw a tall man in a brown leather jacket, gaunt in face and scarred. A squirrel struggled along the alley’s edge, legs scrabbling in the dead leaves.

“He doesn’t look good,” I said.

“I’m going to put him out of his misery,” the man replied. “My son shot him with his BB gun.”

He flicked the blade of a switchblade knife he held in one outstretched hand and he bent towards the squirrel.

I walked on.