People I met today

In one corner: Two gristly bearded old men, one with crooked legs and a cane.
In the other: The Lebanese version of Silent Bob, physically, Jay, verbally. (backwards hat, squawking on his cell phone), and his quiet, chizel-faced cashier counterpart.

Jay and Silent Bob pushed the beardeds out of the way -(aggressively)"Hey, can I like, get a little room in here?"
(corner C clueless yuppie...who's attention is drawn like it was to the almost-shoot out, she ran to the door, while others ducked)
Sans-crooked legs: "You better watch who you're talking to, you....apple..butt, you apple butt! Your butt looks just like an apple!"
Jay and Silent Bob: (snatches the cane violently from crooked-legs, setting him off balance) "Hey, let me borrow that!" (he takes the cane and pokes down a package of the cheapest toilet paper, high on the top shelf in the corner, for clueless yuppie)
Crooked-legs: Blinks

***

I'm teepee-shaped, standing on the top rung of a sidewalk bench, which is slippery with drops of sunshower. My hands are on the cool, moldy stone wall of Prospect Park. Eye level is the deep brown of a wet dirt path, just the width of a single stride. I sniff it, just at my nostrils is the freedom of the cultivated outdoors.

"You can do it!" I turn just as I am stepping down, embarassed to perhaps be committing a crime, and see the iconical old couple, woman with a cane in one hand and the other arm linked around her besweatered husband.

"No I can't!"

"Yes you can, come on. Its a far walk otherwise." They stop to wait, and watch.

"You're not going to watch, are you?"

"Yes! And make sure you're ok." They are all smiles.

So I do it, pump my fist, "Bye, thank you!" and am off, into the forest.

Remember the water, the bowl-like silver mess cup. One good, one licked in thick black from using it over the gas stove. The well, where you had to everything but keep your eyes closed...the sun so bright, glinting off the well water, glinting off the water in the bag, glinting off the water as it splashed over crimson-black skin. How good it tasted, right after you hauled it up in your dusty rubber bag with the too-thick new rope. Luke warm, clean, sweet. But still a touch colder than the air. I never did get brave enough to bathe in front of all those women. Fatou. And her baby, Ibu.
Ramadan. Drowning in a pool of my own sweat on my modest bed. Seething in and out of lucidness. Having my soul spill out, into God, mingling with the people around me. Like the heat waves, creeping over and into everyone, and everything. And then those two full cups of water, at sundown, after sweet bread and coffee. How close to heaven they were. The best thing I've ever consumed.
And just the ordinary days, out for a long walk, talking myself dry, and coming into my cool shaded room, dipping the cup into the clay pot, and drinking with no thought. Water was plentiful, thanks to my ancienne at least.
Water is what I need now. Not coffee, not sugar, soda, bags of treats eaten in a day. My tounge, my throat, my lungs, belly, cells even, long for water. Long for those hot days where every cell in my body was exhausted. Now I drink from a Poland Spring disposable sippy bottle, and throw it in the trash. Perhaps the woman who cleans it out knows the ways of my former life.
I hate old people. And not the kind that are hard and gnarled but the kind that are soft and puckered. My Aunt Ida is 100 years old. Her fingers turn at 45 degree angles from their origins. She is knotted and grey. But she still cooks for herself every day. She doesn't take any pills. She goes to church, and foodshopping. She doesn't complain, even though, as we helped her into her chair, and took off her shoes, I noticed her toes too go at 45 degree angles. "They're bothering her," Aunt Lorraine said. But you would never know.
Or Mam Sagar. Gnarly old woman is she. Mouth like a spit fire, like a flaming dragon angry at every turn. She spurts it out to each kid who crosses her path. She breathes flames over the chores the older ones "make" her do. To the poor job the wives do on tasks she used to do a hundred years ago, in harsher conditions. Walking seven miles with a basin on her head, from when the sun hits the zenith until it sets. However many trips the better. She rubs her knees every night. Arthritis racks her whole body. All the old joints. Mam Maru was up every morning before anyone else. Walking buckets of water to her exquisite garden with her bare feet, stiff like planks. She told me, if she didn't move all day, well then she'd just be sitting in her chair, hurting.
But women here, fat Americans, who sit down at the first sign of aches and pains, and point their gnarled finger (the only thing) at the younger ones to get this, get that. Women who give up the only gift that God has gave them...a body through which to interact with the world. Lungs to sense if the cold air is moist or dry, and what pollutions in it. Hands to put lotion on, to play with hair, to work through grains. Legs to strain against the hill, to burn from repitition, to carry you until they're numb and you are just a walking cloud. A heart, to beat so fast that blood is rushing through your body and it dissolves you into a sea of oxygen. God gave us a soul, yes, but a soul is nothing without a body to act it out. A painter that holds the brush is not a painter at all.

The Seed

I just want to note...
Today I discovered Time Magazine's 25 Best Blogs 2009. I've been searching and asking around to find good blogs to finally make the transition.
Well, this is one of perhaps 3 days at work where I haven't drank coffee, and I have a constant slight buzz that keeps you working at maximum capacity straight through 9-5 without thinking of food or spacing out...
I noted the difference: back from Senegal, (though that's no excuse, but has worked swimmingly to my convenience)...I feel drugged and claustrophobic by the onslaught of TV shows, podcasts, apps, blogs, indie movies and music, books, and witty magazines.
I already felt overwhelmed by books and movies, (the sense of awe and minutia of the days of Barnes and Noble is no more), but being set back a few years admist a digital explosion made me just want to twirl my hair and space out.
Today, thanks to Google reader, I feel like I have finally caught hold. But what I wanted to note, was, the moment of hesitation. The moment of wavering on the edge, before dropping into this brave new world of digital media.
Just thought this megapixel of reflection might be of worth to everyone else who made this progression more in the vain of stepping into the ocean....