Postcard 43

Here is what you are missing:

The seeming near miss of an inattentive dive-bombing sparrow.

Sitting in the center of a busy room -- a restaurant, coffee-shop, a bar, bus station -- and overhearing the conversation next to you: the floating unmoored references, the blind peculiarities of relational histories. Letting the discussion from your opposite side drip in, adding a third. 

You are missing the pleasant disorientation of forty people's conversations sloshing around in an enclosed space, echoing off the walls and each other.

You are missing holding eye contact with strangers -- giving to them kindness, indifference, lust. Receiving eyeballs occulating in flesh intrigued, confused, hostile, desirous.

You have missed the two hookers on the train platform gamboling with a wily transient who is listening to madonna and says, My name is Randy cause I like Candy, I'm going into the city to let the hookers sit on my face. My name's Saul and I eat it all. Where's the money? they ask laughing. Oh Honey, I'm just joking. 

You miss the sky's golden boundary, given miserly between clear-bright and cloud-dark.

All the people passing to and fro, each filling in, with unique intention, all the equivalents of walking. They stroll, amble, patrol, troop, roam, promenade and mosey.

I just looked up. I almost lost the glory of a woman vivid, framed in a warm pane of glass taking off her sweater and hiking down her shirt, riding up over a beguiling sliver of creamy skin. And then seven smiling firemen traipse in, to the delight of the dancing happy barista.
Joy.

How generous and innocuous the world is with joy. Peer over your bad-newspaper, set down your disquieting phone. From reading, from writing even, don't miss the present moment, where joy is as prevalent, as light and meaningless and fleeting as Autumn leaves.