My favorite part of the day may have been when the optometrist projected a very large E onto the wall and said, Don't pay attention to me and my light. Just pay attention to the E. Then she shone her light at each of my eyes while bouncing a little, then swaying a little. I paid attention to the E, but while I did it, I thought about how the large projected E in a dark room and her bouncing and swaying in front of me might make a good moment in a movie.
Later, I was hoping that the man in line in front of me at the co-op was the actor Bob Balaban, but it was not. So I pretended that the man in front of him was Philip Glass. I watched an older woman drop a pre-made pizza crust on the floor and then pick it up again. (I couldn't get to her to offer help from where I was in line, and, anyway, she seemed fine.) Then I made my purchases-- four tangerines, Chem-Free Fair Trade decaf, pecans from the bulk section, chocolate-covered raisins from the bulk section, and some trail mix called Cranberry Jubilee, also from the bulk section. Jubilee! But not.
I leave to sit at a table at the local library branch and write my dispatch. Two middle school aged girls walk by my table. One is drinking something from a Dunkin' Donuts cup. The other is saying, "You don't know how to act like a lady." They both look straight ahead, trying to have dead eyes. In front of me, a small boy checks out a large stack of picture books. Then I'm thinking about Gandhi, a movie I saw when I was in elementary school and watched again on Netflix last night. I think about how we can start out one place and end up in another, and how this might involve reading a large stack of books. When Gandhi was a small boy, he had a very serious gaze. This boy in front of me has flames on his sneakers and a green puffy down coat. He wrinkles his nose a little to push his glasses up, maybe looking at me in his peripheral vision. (Don't pay attention to me and my light.) Then he zooms away on his emblazoned feet.
No comments :
Post a Comment