Listen to the full piece here:
I am sitting on my balcony on a late-summer afternoon. I have my mate gourd beside me and an e-book. There is a much-appreciated breeze darting in and out between the buildings.
My idyll is disturbed by a line of riot-geared police stacked two officers deep marching down the avenue mopping up the last ragged edges of the day’s protest. A group of people hurry into a pizzería, calculating that if they have a slice of pizza in front of them, no one will trouble them. Pizza as an alibi.
Photo journalists with hand-lettered signs saying “PRENSA” wearing bicycle helmets over their flourescent hair and volleyball pads on their knees and elbows walk awkwardly down the street, fooling no one. The flurry of shouts — higher-pitched from the scurrying protesters, deep and gruff from a policeman giving orders to his troops — is broken by the thump-thump of some weapon, but it’s more sound than fury. When the police have passed, the pizza lovers come out in single file sticking close to the wall. In their heads the embellished saga of how they outsmarted la cana by eating a slice of pizza is already taking shape and will be repeated many times.
The drama below me is a cross between kabuki and Buster Keaton. As quickly as it arrived, the commotion passes like a summer squall and I return to my book and my afternoon.
Nothing is as it seems except the wind rustling the leaves in the trees.
A water canon, it’s windows covered in metal grills, parks in front of my building. It’s doors swing open and it’s occupants spill out. Several of them fish cigarettes from their pockets and light up. They gather in a jovial circle, the excitement ebbing. A man in shorts and flip-flops walks two toy poodles down the sidewalk. While they sniff and piss on a tree, he admires the men in their uniforms and berets. One of the men notices him and winks. Poodle Man looks down.
The poodles tire of that particular tree and they head off down the sidewalk trailing their owner who looks back wistfully from the end of his leash.
My world is small and quiet. I don’t have grand ambitions. I do however like to make things. It’s funny how life just happens to you. I live far from where I was born in a country where they speak a different language but, in the end, not much has changed in translation. I still like to look out the window and watch the world go by. There have been bursts of activity over the years but at root I am an observer.
Sometimes I think I was born old. Contemplation is an art more suited to the elderly but I’ve had it since I was young. I would take the bus in from the suburbs to San Francisco and sit on the steps of the opera house and watch people go by. Without ever wanting to die, I always knew it was just around the bend. I count it as a gift: it makes you treasure the small things.
My world is wrapped like a gift in fallen leaves.
Subscribe to Little Epiphanies newsletter here: http://kevincarrelfooter.com/join/
Like this? Share it with a friend:
Leave a Reply