Velvet Verbosity

She is beautiful. Radiant. She can’t possibly know her own beauty. Her skin speaks beauty, abundance and health. She sits, knitting, her brow furrowed in concentration, and I am mesmerized by the little repetitive dance of her fingers.

In the space of an hour she knits about 6 inches of something fuzzy, interwoven with pinks and purples. I don’t like these colors, but they suit her pink pink cheeks so for tonight I don’t mind pinks and purples. Suddenly I don’t mind them so much so that I wish she was knitting whatever it is she’s knitting for me.

It’s because I see her capacity for love, and the sadness that has broken her, and I want to be a vessel to receive what she hasn’t been able to properly give before. It’s because I wonder how she can be so radiant and so sad at once, and how much more radiant she could possibly be. It’s because I want the chance, just one chance, to help someone else shine so brilliantly that the whole lot of humanity goes blind with love. Just that once.

I wish it were some kind of surprising crush, but all desire is fueled by the want of something. It is not her that I desire, but what she is right now that I am not at the moment, maybe never will be again, maybe never ever was. I like to believe I was once a creature of flesh and sorrowful juices and radiant love. That I had beauty like that. My decaying bones and gristle want her life.

As we are leaving she comes up to me. She is so much taller that she has to arch her neck downwards toward me and her face is looming like a pinked moon just inches from mine. I feel vulgar next to her radiance, but I don’t turn away. I let her grace soothe me. I let my own spark ignite and burn. She is thanking me for something I said. “I really appreciate it you know”, she says, gently smiling.

Her heart aches through her eyes, and her love mixes with her sorrow creating tears that don’t flow out, but instead back down to her heart filling it up until it’s so large I can hear it beating in my own chest.

Picture Credit: I found this picture by doing a Google Image Search for “Juice and Gristle”. Brought me to a great little blog about “The Culinary Adventures of a New York City Lawyer”. Check it out. Tell him that Velvet Verbosity sent you.

Today, I crossed the field where the local Smithie girls play Ultimate Frisbee, noticing my feet getting kind of damp from the wet grass. As I stepped onto the sidewalk, my world abrubtly converged with a stranger’s.

She (the stranger) was riding along on her bicycle in all her short-haired, salvation army attired, messenger bag shouldered glory when, suddenly, some unnamed joy seized upon her so that just before we would enter each other’s visual fields, she belted forth a loud whoop…a hearty “WooHoooooooo!”, that she let arc out of her young, proud mouth.

For the briefest of moments, we were face to face, her head turned to greet me as I stepped out from behind the fence, and our eyes met and lit up, and our faces beamed acknowledging smiles at what had just been shared. Then she was gone, my bicycle messenger of joy.

(Image from www.vanillabicycles.com because this post is about the convergence of strangers, and bicycles and joy, and in my humble opinion Vanilla Bicycles are all about joy in the form of bicycles, and I suppose I could fit strangers in there too if I thought about it.)

I see her every morning, and sometimes in the afternoon. She runs up and down my road every day, but she doesn’t look like a runner. She doesn’t have proper running shoes, or clothing. She looks pained but isn’t sweating. She doesn’t move like a runner, she holds her arms the wrong way.

It is safe to say that she is probably new at this sport of running, but it isn’t only that. She is overcoming something. Running, for her, is not just an avenue for a firmer body and better stamina. No, she is running for other reasons, and I can see them written all over her.

She runs to escape a past, to get ahead of the present, and in the hopes of arriving in a new future. She runs to break the barriers between the universe she lives in now, and the parallel universe that could be her life. She runs to build…her muscle, her confidence, her dreams, her will. She runs to escape the last remnants of darkness that cling inside her. She runs against the grain, against everything she has ever been shown, ever been taught, ever been allowed. She runs for freedom. She runs to save her soul.

(Image: Sean Gabriel Ellul http://www.sellul.com/dmaster12.html)

At the traffic light I see them. He is capable, fit, loose in his body, and confident. He crosses the busy street with ease, knowing without effort how much give and take is needed to navigate the traffic. His shirt lifts as the cars pass. He doesn’t hesitate, he moves like liquid between the cars.

The other He waits on the curb, smiling nervously, fists shoved into pockets as he waits for an opening that on this street, may never come. His eyes alternate between his confident companion walking away, not turning back, and the cars speeding by bumper to bumper. He flips his hair in an effort to look confident, to appear cool with it.

For the first time, my heart does not weep for the underdog. I simply see…see that one will move through his life with ease and this will burn him in ways he has yet to come to understand…and the other will agonize over each decision, each word he speaks, and this will probably bring him more security than he can now imagine.

Driving this morning, I see him walking. Old man with a fisherman’s hat, walking slowly. Maybe it is because I am halfway to 70 that I wonder if I will love an old man someday. If I will find the stoop in his shoulders and the shuffle of his feet endearing. If I will kiss his thinned softened lips and still feel a little spark.

As it happens in imperceptable increments, will I notice him growing old with me? Or will we look at each other and see each other exactly as the day we met?

Pediatrician waiting room, 3 p.m. - He is soft…soft face, soft brown eyes, soft long hair, soft body, soft shoes. His body whispers of warm waters, composting leaves and earth, endless gentle streams slowly smoothing the rocks.

His son is a small version of him and he dotes after his baby sister, she a pink cheeked child of delight and eager wonder. The father watches his son rock his sister on a rocking horse. The son looks to his father as he rocks her…once, twice, and again…smiling, seeking reassurance.

It comes, it never wavers. The father’s approval is a beam streaming from eye to eye, unfaltering.

State Street, 4:25 p.m. - He is happy, happy, happy. His grin is almost silly, so full of happiness and pride. “Giddy” or “delirious with joy” come to mind as I watch him. Mom and baby on a bike in front of him, he takes up the rear where they cannot see the sparkles of love lighting up his eyes, brighter than the late afternoon sun that blinds me as I drive.

Lacrosse game, 6:30 p.m. - He has come straight from work to sit on the cold metal of the bleachers. The wind flaps at the bottom corner of his navy business suit. When he smiles, he is a movie star with his bright tiny pearl teeth flashing beneath black sunglasses. He is perfectly trimmed and perfectly proud.