Wheezing, I trudged down the block under an overcast sky thinking maybe I caught a virus (or maybe the infamous virus) and that today, I was showing the first symptoms of something that would put me flat on my back. Or perhaps this difficulty in breathing was due to being out of shape although in my estimation, I wasn't more in shape or out of shape than two months ago. And then I realized I was walking downwind of a heavy smoker.
The smoker turned, finally liberating me from his foul air, and I saw that he was heading toward the local athletic center. (Strange, isn't it, that some people think that they can negate bad things by doing something good afterwards, like drinking diet soda after binging on chocolate.) The athletic center's parking lot sprouted a large banner for a home and life sale.
Traffic was backed up by neon orange vested policemen to allow pedestrians--mostly parents and young children--to cross the busy road. People carried plastic bags filled with home decorating do-dads. The sale was a simple but well-attended affair populated by ordinary people.
And it was the sight of these ordinary people, not the long-haired scientists or the trendy students or the well-dressed older people doing their civic duty, that made me almost stop on the street and burst into tears. These ordinary people didn't give away false smiles or try to talk loudly in an effort to make everyone else around them think that they were important. They were being themselves--the parents playing with their kids or holding their hands when crossing the street, the children giggling at a joke made by their friends.
It made me wish for a simpler time, when the future didn't feel so close. I wanted to be at that time and place when my attention for someone wasn't destroyed by other worries. In a way, it would have been easier to be "simple", to not understand why the adults were tying yellow ribbons to everything in sight or spilling stinging words into others ears because of something so distant it may as well be happening on the moon.
The weather was warm, the snow mostly melted finally revealing the ground underneath. Leaves, unswept from the previous fall, covered the mud in a thin, dry crackly layer. Before, they had been covered in smooth whiteness. Certainly, the ground looks ugly, but in a way, I prefer it because it is true and not hidden behind the brittleness of frost which makes you fall from its slickness.
