With three minutes left on the timer at the corner of the computer screen, I decided to take a quick browse through my blogroll list. That was where I found the news on Blogsisters of the Columbia accident. I couldn't say I thought of anything at that moment when I read those words except that it was a tiny bit of reality that had somehow seeped into my rather surreal day. The timer hit zero as I stood there at the computer terminal thinking of nothing and I was forced to close the window.
Walking out into the side lobby of the library, I noticed that the clock said 3 o'clock. The librarians sat at their desks barely looking up and the people browsing the stacks were off on their own little world as I had been. Outside, the grayed sky was a weak drizzle, the high-rises cloaked in a dream-like mist as if my previous attempts at peering into my memory somehow materialized physically.
I took the T to the aquarium. The crowds had thinned out even more than before. A woman, the subway train driver, screamed at the passengers to not hold the door open when it was closing. Her voice echoed into the terminal like aftershocks. The passenger sitting across from me frowned.
Past an Irish pub and an Italian resturant, I walked under a bridge where steam rose from the ground. The harbor was silent except for the cries of gulls. The only people at the dock were an old man in a bright yellow raincoat walking his white terrier and a woman all in red, the red feathers in her red hat drooping into her eyes as she rushed past. Three small boats sailed toward shore. No sails were in sight, but the masts swayed as the vessels bobbed on the waves, tilting right, then left, in an erratic rhythm only known to the sea.
I sat on a metal bench and took out a French krueller. Birds flocked overhead, shrieking and formed a semi-circle around me. The seagulls chased away the fat pigeons, and among the seagulls, a dominant bird emerged, hopping toward the others so that they backed away. The bully fluffed up his feathers and uttered a warning caw every so often. Opportunists. Scavengers. I placed the pastry back into the bag and strolled away.
At the IMAX, cuddling couples ate all of their popcorn before they were even admitted into the theater and Harvard medical students spoke of philosophy as they waited in line. I watched the movie, alone, and found myself crying when the hero was snatched by flying fiends from his childhood companions. I don't cry at movies, let alone in public, and bewildered, I wandered out afterwards back into a strange city under a dark weeping sky.
