birdwatching

Sometimes when my vision is fogged and my sense of reality so distorted for some reason that I don’t even know what mood I am in, tunnel vision kicks in and all I see are handsome things.

I saw a man in his fifties or so walk gracefully out of a courtyard where there once was a famous gay bar, walk around the side of that building with a spring in his step, then look around swiftly, turn the corner, and push the door to enter the Academy of Sciences Archive.

I saw a young and very tall father bring his tiny pink-dressed daughter of no more than two into a coffee-shop, give her a plastic fork, and watch her poke her way merrily through a plate of cheesecake and a cup of white coffee, and then clean up so neatly and carry her away.

I saw a burly, muscular man of about thirty sitting in a trolleybus, clenching in his hands a bunch of pages, the top one bearing the title ‘Instructions for a Man about to be Wed’, rolling and unrolling them, leafing through them, his face frozen with what seemed to be worry.

I saw women queuing in a crowded hall, some  of them dancing around looking young and fresh, yet with a hint of ugly old age to come, and some old and bent, but still with some beauty remaining in their wrinkles, whispering of the joy and lightness there once was.

I don’t know what conclusion to draw out of all of this. There is no sappy ‘lesson to be learned’ or ‘pearl of wisdom’. In fact, most of this was written a while ago and kept sitting there, because I just did not know how to finish it. I still don’t, but what the heck.