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Sometimes I notice things before/after Sometimes I notice things. Today is was the portly blonde girl that wandered through the intersection, wearing her special red velvet pants. She hung her head low, and walked as a victim would, hips swung back, and her enormous backside covered by yards of red velvet. The other drivers laughed and pointed. Not me. Pasty white thighs hiden by royal red velvet. It made me wish for velvet clothing. I also noticed a kid riding a bike. I was in the absolute middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere. I had to take a detour off of the road I was on, which led to the middle of nowhere, and I spotted him, riding his old BMX bike out of this clutch of buildings, a hamlet without a name, wearing a red, white and black checkered flannel, navy blue jeans, and an old style train conductors cap. He looked at me as I sped by in my black monte carlo, moonroof open, windows down, shirtless in black shorts and silver reflective shades and regarded me for a second, before putting his head down and peddaling onward. I felt sorry for him at first, for being there, dressed in those clothes on a hot day, away from civilization at its gaudy finest, convieninces and opportunities he would never see, and likely grow to be distrustful of, unaware of the bounty that lay behind the facade. Some of it would filter through, but the sheer humanity of it all would be lost. Drugs will find their way, as will cable tv. But this child was stuck in Backward Nowhere. A future militia member. Few girls and fewer friends. I wanted to stop and give him some CD's of modern music, something. Give him a ride in a fine car with leather bucket seats, tell him to look for a world beyond the horizon. Anything. And then I thought, "You judgemental prick. Who's to say the opportunities and costs, the trade offs and exchanges are any better in one man's world as opposed to another?" He may not have some of the opportunities as others, but he has a set of circumstances uniquely his own, a world he can conquor and shape to his needs, should he so strive and aspire to do so. Instead of the vapid fakery, he will grow with a girl near him, near his age. The community will raise a barn, and he will have a night of sheer excastsy as he kisses his girl for the first time in the haystack, and later as he fingers her out after they sneak out of their bedrooms late at night. He will ride horses, and his hair will toussel in the wind. In the end, he may be ignorant of some of the pleasures of life that I so ignorantly felt crucial and superior, and that ignorance may serve him well. Pandora's box is open for business. I rustled a hand around and found an apple. I noticed a black raven, years ago atop the cliffs, the blue water hundreds of feet below, the white and purple rocks which so many souls for centuries have trod upon, regarding me with intelligence, not leaving as I trod by with a head full of mushrooms and no intentions whatsoever. And I noticed the loons last night, calling their mournful call. Once and again, amidst the water and the sweet clean smell of white pine. Red eye in ebony head, squabbling with another for territory, until that was settled, and his mournful call echoed across the silent acres of water, a call full of life and death, full of the sadness that is temporal, his lake now but not forever. The call, the smell of the pines, the currents of wind rustling the tops of the trees in gusts, the flashes of lightning, making god-like veins across the sky reminding me of summer camp and the fallacies of youth, never being able to sleep in a bed the first night there, listening to the rain on the roof, as one of the boys calls for his mother in his sleep, and the trees rocked as if by waves, seeing the graying of the dawn as the light creeps across the world, just before it wakes the rest, the loon rises, and in the morning mist, on a lake of glass, perfect as a mirror, the mournful call of the loon echoes, giving my small child arms goosebumps, awestruck that I made it through the turbulent, restless night, wanting to go home, missing my parents but not admitting it to anyone, waking up with the morning, taking showers and seeing faces, expecting everything somehow to have changed with the magic that thundered last night, punctuated by the call, noticing everything was still the same, unexplored, but sadly still the same, the wonders of life passing so many by, unnoticed. I notice things, sometimes.
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