In the shower this morning, while
soaped to the gills and enjoying the steam, I remembered out of the
blue how our first grandson, who is nearly four years old now, went
through a phase early on when he distrusted everyone except his sweet
mama and my wife and me — and, because of my appearance, almost
every long-haired, shaggy-bearded, disheveled person he saw in
public. I’ve always been proud of that.
I also remembered a dream I had back
around 1989 or so, in which a friend of mine, who was in his
upper-twenties at the time, was an old, homeless, derelict man on a
sidewalk downtown. He didn’t recognize me. Ever since, with no
logic to support it, I have expected someday to find him that way.
I did in fact see him at the post
office recently after a twenty-year interval. And by “him”
I mean someone who looked very much like him, to the point that it
could have been him, that it must have been him, and
yet despite that I just couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t homeless, and
yet there was already much of my dream in him. He was several people
ahead of me in line. When he finished his business and left the
building, I noticed that he also walked like my friend. I’m still
wondering.
4 comments:
Trippy stuff, William. A pleasing prose break. And power to the disheveled everywhere! If we wuz runnin things, there wouldn't be so much trouble and fuss in the world, now would there?
Peter, here’s what I imagine: a view of the earth from space, in which this baby-blue orb is as shaggy and bearded as we. On a bright day, maybe with sunglasses. Or the whole galaxy, as a braided beard of stars.
I like the story, the observation, the almost knowing and feeling for a person, not really known.
Thanks, Anthony. And it’s comforting and disturbing both to think of ourselves in this light, how we might seem and appear from someone else’s perspective....
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