Static Life

Tuesday, 5 September 2006.

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He was on a bench at the crosswalk, sitting upon it indian-style.

I walked by, umbrella in my hand. “What are you doing in the rain like that?”

He paused, and without raising an eye, said, “I'm feeling the icy pinpricks on my skin. I'm contrasting them with the soft, velvet breeze. I'm watching squirrels scamper for cover and plants quiver gleefully in the breeze. I'm listening to the rustling of leaves on woody fingers and smelling the grass. I'm sitting, doing nothing at all.”

Only then did he look up at me, his inquisitor. He smiled with all the brightness and sincerity of a child.

“Right now, for once in my life, I'm living. Perhaps in an hour, I'll be a dead man walking again; but for now, at least, I live.”

I wore a quizzical look as I walked away, wondering what he meant.