Once I was sitting on some steps. Well, actually, I was standing upon some steps, leaning over a concrete slab, crying my eyes out, being held by a person with whom I'd spent quite a bit of time without ever actually interacting, and when I looked up, there was a coyote. The coyote darted across the roadway....trotted in fact. Trotted, trotting, tra-la-la-ing in front of my very weary eyes. The boy howled as he imagined the coyote would, but there was little response from the creature. I cracked a smile, however, but I myself was still howling at heart from the chaos of the evening.
These are the moments of my life which are never caught on camera, but I always wish they were. Instead, I have a collection and assortment of trashy self-portraits: me, intoxicated, smiling or kissing or crinkling my nose and showing my teeth to a bunch of people I'm not very friendly with, and when I see them I say hello and they say hello but really we are saying nothing, or the something that we are saying we would never say out loud. It goes something like,
"Oh shit. Fuck. Do I say hello? Do I acknowledge that photo(s) that Gregg or Sam or Liz or Cara will inevitably put on Facebook, for people who have minimal ties to me to see and to wonder who you are? Maybe they'll think you're my friend. Maybe you are my friend. Maybe we could be friends, but this false interaction which has forever been documented will remind us of this awkward first encounter, and will prevent us from ever being friends. Fuck. Shit. Okay, well we just met eyes, I can't avoid you now. I'll just say hello and get on with it. ... but you haven't said hello yet. Maybe you'll pretend not to see me. No, it's definitely been too long for you to have not seen me, we've been paralleling each other for almost 30 seconds now. Okay. I'll do it."
"Hey _________."
"Oh, _______, hey."
...and the conversation resumes.
If only, however, I could capture those brilliant moments in time where everything just feels right. Where, even if everything is wrong, there is something completely and utterly perfect about the moment. The dialog is scripted. The lighting is from stage left. The coyote is actually a dog, trained by the best of the best to appear ferocious and wild. That trot was perfected to a T. However, this is only how I see it. In reality, this is reality. And I want everyone who secretly stalks me, who secretly pours their soul into my life, who secretly every photo taken of me and wonders what it is I'm doing, who it is I'm with, and why we decided to take drunken photographs together-- I want them to see this moment on the staircase. I want them to see that moment at approximately 2pm when the sun is shining just right through the leaves, when the grass is glowing and the air is moving only slightly, when I am thinking of a little melody in my head, setting the world to the tune of my life. My life cannot be simplified to a series of photographs some semi-stranger put on the internet; my life is being lived every second of every day.
The coyote disappeared for a moment, and that silence was golden. I was in the arms of a strange boy, enveloped by his fuzzy scarf, feeling his breath on my neck, and I was happy; I was at peace. My external life was in shambles but my life was just perfect on the inside. All I needed at that moment was being fulfilled. I suppose I don't really need to share that with the world; it can be something shared between the three of us: the boy, the coyote, and me.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
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