Sunday, August 4, 2013

Looking At Strangers: Three Minutes at Royal Street

 Community Coffee: a glad respite from the afternoon heat. Sitting here, staring at a laptop monitor for too long, trying to decipher what Aquinas said about this or that, as a friend tries to figure out the same sitting beside me, I take a break and look up. At the other end of the coffee shop, another man, possibly some years older than me, hunches over his own laptop. Polo and shorts. I’m wearing shorts, but not a polo. Instead my dress shirt, which I often wear to parties and dates. I don’t know who the man is or what he works on, but I praise him for giving it so much importance. Now he puts on headphones. Hermetic seal.

Behind him, two closed doors with window panes reveal fragments of outside’s geography: angled parts of tree branches, Spanish architecture, and parked cars crammed into the window, fighting for their part in the frame. And the people, of course: A woman and man, in their sixties, walk down sweaty and fashionable. He wears a fedora, she a sun hat. Their faces look exhausted, as many tourists’ faces do at this hour, but I’m sure months from now they’ll consider their visit to New Orleans a worthy one. Behind them, weary parents walk. The woman rolls the stroller with the sleepy baby, the latter unseen by me. The father wears a Saints cap. I remember the Colombian Jesuit who, once seeing a similar sight in an airport in Paraguay, turned to me and with disdain remarked, “Rolando, that is not freedom.”

Through another window, I spot a heterosexual twentysomething couple, involved in a playful embrace, smiling at each other. They kiss, hold their lips together for a moment, then break apart, and laugh. It’s like they’re dancing with their faces. Conclusion: Kisses are inside jokes. They keep going at this—kiss, laugh break, kiss, laugh break—for almost a whole minute. I feel happy for them. And I keep looking, which is kind of weird. I get embarrassed at myself. I turn bright red. But at this point there’s no point in looking away. I also realize, after having taken in the scene, that I feel a need to point out that they are in fact a heterosexual couple, and thus add the adjective to the first sentence of this paragraph, adjective which means: the woman has black hair, the man is blonde, and they’re both white. The 21st century has given the writer reason to add adjective upon adjective upon adjective. I say “couple,” you ask, “which couple?”

Anyway, they look at each other like that, smiling and stupid, for a few seconds more, speaking sweet things probably unworthy of philosophy papers or anything publishable (no one develops theorems while they kiss a lover), and then continue walking, disappearing from the window frame. This is probably the last time I will ever see them, and so I am glad that they are smiling, because that means that in my mind, they will never be sad. Strangers, those you see from window panes and balconies, at close enough an angle to perceive their faces, yet far enough to make you forego guessing at names or any kind of specific circumstance, can often seem like the happiest people in the world. They have a long history, sure. But you are treated, in fortunate moments like this one, to its brightest chapters. Or to those that look the brightest, anyway.

After they leave, the street stays there, empty of faces and full of city. I wait. Something else should happen, someone should walk by whose countenance and gait will tell a rich history. Maybe a homeless person, a struggling artist, an afternoon drunk. My prayers are answered: an overweight man, with a short-sleeved button-down, walks into the coffee shop and decides to stand right in front of the window, blocking my view of the street. What blocks my view, precisely, is his belly: a boulder, pregnant with the exhaustion of many happy meals. Why did he decide to stand there? He wields a hoarfrost mustache, dimmed eyes. A few seconds and suddenly it is all clear: a child, a little boy, comes running from behind him and stands beside him, tugging at him. Daddy, I want a croissant. The boy wants a croissant the way Ponce de León wanted immortality: undyingly, fundamentally, immortally. This is not just a want, it is the consummation of all wants. I should add: The man is balding.

Beside me, my friend asks, “How’s your Aquinas paper going?”

I answer, “I haven’t worked on it at all.”

August 4, 2013

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