Clatter Obstructs

The cool ocean wind as it coasts to Oakland picks memories of forgotten falls, carries them to nose hairs, transports smells to that part of the brain that longs and seeks and sometimes yearns. The crisp immediacy beckons Lake Ada on October days when leaves as if in time lapse change green, orange, red, yellow, brown, then die. This is that and all other moments wrapped in a scarf of stark black and white warming veins and arteries confusing a heartbeat that knows no difference between contrast. All are the same. And each distinction is only a grain of sand passing through my wide spread fingers.

The light distilled by swaying leaves that will never change color and might never die disjoints time. The trick of memory and travel converge on a life meant to wander, to be stuck between objects and subjects, to always be on a bus that has no destination and never stops. You are here in the back seat waiting. Always waiting.

(S)he rummages through garbage with (her)his basket obstructing that bus forcing its stop, and you leave. It is your only chance. And you are confronted by (his)her poverty, (her)his homelessness, the stench of unbathed days. This is where you are supposed to be, and yet it is rejected so thoroughly by uncontrolled repugnance. Vomit, but not of the stomach variety, spills out of mouths, a sign of our collective distaste for things that confront and force discomfort. We never want our sphere invaded by others not invited. There was safety on that bus. Why did you leave?

Interrupted. A phone rings begging an answer that you are not ready to give. We wait for that moment when all is revealed unable to see the revelation of our current state. A revolution scratches under skin and irritates that state. You scratch not knowing, and I watch. I am (him)her as (s)he stacks cups and bottles of plastic and tin. We are the trinity: you, s(he), me. That is the beauty of English: first, second, third person implied in singular terms and yet contained in all. You, (s)he, me are our and we and they and you.

The sand that falls from wide spread fingers, each single grain multifaceted, collects its hope. I, s(he), you walk past it unknowingly each time we don't stop. There it is waiting to be found. It is in (her)his cup resting in (his)herbasket. It is what forced the bus to halt fleetingly.

We still don't see it.

We never will.

Clatter obstructs.

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