I don’t remember the feeling exactly, or at least I couldn’t remember the feeling until I felt it again. Being a kid…seeing another kid cry, whether it was eating too much Play Doh or compound fracturing an ankle from excessive and careless Pogoballing. One child cries, they all cry. It’s a strange practice seeing as it’s only in rare cases that one can find pleasure in the pain that precedes a sobbing face. Then again, I suppose it’s about the release.
…
There’s a fruit man that sets up shop one block South and one block East of my Kings Road stomps. I often drive past his bags of Bing cherries, wondering both about his asking price and why I don’t stop on my way to work to pick one up. There are few greater pleasures in this world than spitting pits of Bing across Olympic for my usual 30 minute downtown joyride. Of course, these are the things of my useless daydreams. I often find him nestled between protruding roots of a tree that shades his grass top merchandise mart, asleep, maybe drunk. Quite recently though, as I floated past, it wasn’t Dr. Cherries that caught my attention…
On the opposite side of the street, there was something else. Entirely. Flowers, candles, grief. Two girls sat on the curb; carefree like the gum assuming anyone ever gave or gives a floating fuck about the 4 calories that come in each stick. These two girls…it was as if they were floating…or hopelessly trying to float away. Both their heads hung, one shielded by the wide brim of a Yankees hat. It took a moment, but when the moment came, I felt it for miles…days. They were in pain. Seeing these other kids, something twisted in my guts and nearly ripped me in. They looked up as I slowly passed through the stop sign. My mouth moved uncontrollably, formed the only word I could have imagined forming, “sorry.” Their heads fell as I passed through and all that came to mind…
Whoever this was was loved and now they’re dead and even though we both agree that at times you lack desire to know many or anyone on the face of this world for reasons that don’t trace back to an abused childhood or a struggling adolescence, you never knew them and now you never will and this is an undeniably nasty bite and why?
…
The next day, I took the same route, curious. There was a new pair, this time a He and She. They were strangers...I could tell. He rested a hand on her shoulder as She cried. As I floated through the stop sign, I heard her speak, “His smile just lit up the room.” I cringed, found myself wishing she had instead taken the road less trite…something like “He just wore the best shoes you ever saw, didn’t he?”
But in reality, I knew. Trite is life. What she said made it real. What else do you remember about people when they die early? It's the smile. Always the smile.
…
Tonight, I drove by the scene again, three days after I had first passed. Candles were still burning. I had hoped someone would be there, sitting on the curb, floating. Because for me, it’s the kind of thing I’d do on a Sunday…get out, ask. No one was. Someone had been recently. Recently, I don’t think they’ve stopped coming…and I don’t know what to think about that. My personal revelations are rare but then again, hardly.
…
Life is a view looking down from the top of a very, very tall building. It’s a building I selectively climb and selectively toe my feet to the leap. Since this process can be accomplished upon personal election, I hitch when trying to understand why such a thing would be refused. Often, it is...just never by me...
When the thin wind swirls my face and introduces me to pause, I ask myself how I got there but never why. Then, looking to my left, right, I see thousands...millions of faces until they blind and cease my worries and I remember the lovely view, looking out...even if all around, all the time, people are falling.
