Perfection On The Corner

Parker sipped at the jar that held her morning cup of tea.  Just 15 minutes after the water had boiled and the milk was added to the decaf earl gray, all the aromas and flavors were blended and it was now the perfect temperature.  She held the jar with her right gloved hand, finding the glass too hot for the touch, but just the right heat for her tongue. Steam danced in brief swirling movements off the top of the liquid, smelling of earthy bergamot and sweet cream. 
She guided the cool plastic steering wheel with her left, ungloved hand, turning it expertly as the road curved just slightly to the left, and then a moment later, to the right.  On her left was the Alemany farmer’s market, which she knew started very early. 
It was 7:30 and already there were groups of two or three middle aged Asian women crossing the street, leaving with heavy bags of produce and vegetables she could not name. She surveyed the sea of white canopied tents from afar as she waited for the light to change. When it did, she was off, scanning the road for potential hazards, as Mr. Dutton had taught her in driver’s ed. 
She went underneath a freeway overpass and was once again delighted to see the mural on the large cement pillar that held up part of the overpass bride.  It was bright, with all the rainbow represented.  The painting wrapped around the wide cylinder and there were huge purple and yellow flowers that guided the eye smoothly towards the predominant subject: the torso of a smiling black woman nearly enveloped in foliage and colors.
She hit another light as she emerged from the shadow of the bridge.  She sat, watching the various lanes of cars take turns moving through the intersection. A Beatles song came on the radio and she sang along with the lyrics. 
“Jai Guru Deva. Om... Nothing's gonna change my world.” 
She noticed the vacant lot on the corner edged with wild fennel over five feet tall.  Where some of a fence remained, scrawled graffiti speckled it like bird droppings on a rusted car. 
“Nothing's gonna change my world.” 
She sang, and it was one of those moments, so early in the morning, when everything seemed perfectly in place. All the thousands of moments that had filled her lifetime, the people she had known- those that had been forgotten and lost, the moments she remembered and the pain that had etched itself into her story, everything at that corner seemed so delicately perfect.
It was now a familiar sensation that seemed mostly to come on these early morning drives, sometimes with a warm jar of tea in her hand and a sense of something at the edge of her skin and awareness more beautiful than she could ever really describe, a wonder that went beyond the knowable.
“Jai Guru Deva. Om... Nothing's gonna change my world.” 
As a tear swelled up and pushed itself over the lip of her eyelid, she remembered that she had cried at the very same spot during a Beatles song just a few weeks before. The same song. The same moment repeated.  She let the tear flow, letting the tiny river stay on her cheek tingling with life. 
Breathe, she remembered.  Her chest expanded as the light changed to green and she pressed on the pedal.
Later she would think about the corner- what was it about that spot, so early in the morning, that brought her to life?  Later she would caress the edges of consciousness and marvel at the mystery of the recurring story.
But for now, before the human remembered itself, she sang and let the tears fall as they would. 

Moments

Thad stood by the wall waiting for her. His dark hair hung around his pale face making his blue eyes blaze as though they were lighted stained glass. When she came he watched every detail of her, the jaunty walk that carried her, the long dirty blond hair swaying, the fingers that pushed it back, the smile that flashed across her face to greet him. He was so absorbed in all of these details, drawing them in like a plant drinking up sunshine, that he hardly moved. His smile was brief and only skin deep, his eyes blazed on like deep blue wounds, unaffected by the momentary twitch of his lips. She had the camera in her hands and was already raising it to take his photo. Now he moved, raising a hand.
“Wait a minute, your taking my picture?”
“Yeah.” She said looking at him above the camera, still smiling.
“Why?” he asked, and she shrugged in response,
“Because you look good.”
“I mean what are you going to do with it? It’s not for a project or something, is it? I don’t want to see myself on flicker.”
Now it was her turn to ask,
“Why?” she let the camera drop a little.
“Because I don’t want other people looking at me, I don’t like feeling like I’m on display. You’ve been taking all these pictures. What are you doing with them?”
“Well,” she said, lowering the camera entirely, “Nothing yet. What’s the matter? I thought we were having fun?”
“We have been, it’s just that I want the fun to be between us. These are our moments. I don’t want to share them.”
Her cheeks flushed with color. He watched the smile and the warmth flee from her eyes. When it went away he felt as though he was being stabbed in the heart. She was drawing it back into herself, refusing to share.
“Nothing is ours, Thad. We’re borrowing time from death.” She said coolly.
She was being philosophical, as she was prone to be. So beautiful, so warm and open and then so cold and incomprehensible. Why? Why couldn’t she just enjoy being together? Why did she have to constantly take pictures and say things that baffled him?
“What do you mean?” he asked her.
“I mean that we don’t own anything. We are temporary occupants of these bodies, and this world. These aren’t our moments, these are just moments that we are a part of.”
These words pushing him away, he struggled for a foothold.
“It’s like you don’t even want to be in the moment. You’re just hiding behind the camera. What are you hiding from?”
Now her eyes seemed to be screaming, icy gusts of wind howling around his bones. Her voice was rigid, measured.
“I’m not hiding.” She said, “I am here. I see the moment as precious too. And I know that it’s temporary, that it will vanish, so I seize it, I do something with it, instead of letting it wash passively over me. I engage it. Because I care. Because it isn’t just about me.”
The sun was sinking behind the buildings at her back, tucking its light safely away.
“You’re trying to capture it, but then it’s just dead.” He said.
Shadowy coolness kissed their skin.
“Don’t tell me what I’m trying to do.” She answered. She didn’t yell, but the words were severe, punishing. “I know what I’m doing. And I can do it somewhere else, with someone else if you don’t want to.”
She stared at him and their eyes locked in a silent battle, a tug of war between souls. Then she turned her back on him and walked away, a breeze catching her hair as she went.
He watched her details receding, drew them into himself greedily, stoking the green fires in his gut, wanting, and hating simultaneously. She disappeared out of the gate and around the corner, leaving him alone, standing by the wall in the diminishing light, a picture that would never be taken.

The Boys And The Path

The sound of twenty small plastic wheels on pavement shook the narrow park path. Like a deep, elongated rumble, the sound traveled like a steady thunder that hid in the cloudless sky. They traveled in a herd this early Sunday afternoon, these five young men, all thin and lean and wearing baggy pants. They moved as they did almost every other day, together, in a pack that shook the earth with their sound. Five skateboards moved in near-unison along a tight curve in the cement path, a bend in the meandering walkway that cut through the city park for miles in each direction, going past small lakes and barely-blooming cherry blossoms and a circular equestrian field. Though the path was mostly dotted with pedestrians, the boys rode it with ferocity, unyielding in their speed. It was their highway, a lane between the bright fields of green grass and low shrubs.
On either side of the path and all around them were couples on picnic blankets and young kids chasing after plastic balls and groups of people in their early twenties lounging beneath the open sky. It was a warm sunny day, an unusual day for a city famous for its fog. And though the people they passed basked in the sunshine, the boys paid no attention to weather. It was jeans, a T-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap off to the side in the sun or fog. Their lives were not ruled by the sun like the girls in their neighborhood, the girls that lay out in small bikinis when the sun made an appearance and hid when it didn’t. And they would look at the girls as they rode by, but they had no patience to sit and talk.
Like soldiers they combed the city. Skating alleyways and metal rails and stairs they came across. The people out strolling were merely obstacles. If someone could not hear the roar of their cumulative wheels, then they would shout, and soon the person would feel the impending doom of five skateboards at their back and jump off the path at the last second. Sometimes they would hear a yell fade into the distance as they skated on, someone who had not been quite fast enough, someone had not understood their urgent need for speed.
On this stretch of path, there were no obstacles, no couples holding hands or young teenage girls laughing in a tight cluster. As far as they could see, a long stretch of concrete lay before them, open and inviting. A warm wind rattled the tree tops in the distance, long, tall pines that had grown for years. Twenty wheels rolled on, carrying with them the eagerness of escape, the ecstatic impulses of five young men to explode outwards, moving ever-forward. There was no time for the girls in bikinis and the little daisies they offered. No time to admire the colors of the rainbow they had vaguely heard about. No time to be still.

Dove

She broke away from the metallic roar, from the river made of asphalt and shiny bits of red and blue and gray, the river that breathed exhaust and waves of heat and only really sounded like a river if you closed your eyes and imagined a tranquil valley full of trees and moving water. This was a river for the imagination, but she traveled through its imaginary body often, merging and branching as was necessary. And on this warm Saturday, after a nearly full day of sun and monetary transactions, she broke away from the near constant flow and began the easy-angled descent into the strictly regimented grids of the city.
The hill down was a gentle slope and she braked anticipating the light that lay 500 feet away. Something flashed white and she saw a snow-white dove coming towards her windshield. It came towards her, making no move to ascend into safety above her. At the last second, when she thought for sure there would be a bright red collision, it turned like a stealth jet fighter and tipped its wings to avoid death. Up and over her car, then it came back towards her, flying just a couple of feet from her open window, as though they were in a race to the finish. And then again, the creature’s wings turned sharply and it rose into the air.
As the car slowed to a stop, she turned her body to watch the flurry of white move through this metal offshoot. This bird was not injured, unable to escape in a moment of shock, this dove played in traffic, lunging at the cars that came from the metal-filled freeway, flying beside them as though they were its equals, mocking their strength that wasn’t earned, but bought.
The light was red and she watched this act with a smile. This was avian revolution. All death is certain and what better death than warping the images of possibility. This could be its last statement, and what a beautiful white shining statement it was. It was chaotic, but not completely out of control. The symbol of peace, the creature of gentle values defied its pure white feathers and earthly symbol and flapped as though there was nothing to fear. No moving cars, no moving tires, no clear windshields that awaited an impact. This road was for play, and perhaps the end would be covered in sticky red and broken glass, but all death is certain.
She watched, smiling with awe. She turned with a smile to the 36 year old Latin man in the blue truck next to her at the light, he looked towards her and she saw a shadow of unease and questioning run briefly across his face. The strangeness of a smiling stranger. She held her smile and turned away, searching for the dove.