Monday

The In-Between Weather

It is cool and breezy outside, the sun warms up the sidewalk and the back of my neck.  I'm wearing my fall jacket, a patterned thing covered in buckles that my brother convinced me to buy.  It makes me a little self-conscious, but I don't care too much because of the breeze and the sun.  On the train a woman is holding a string of beads in her fingers.  They are all identical: blue and plastic.  She has black hair and there are little diamonds on the teal frames of her glasses.  She looks normal, in a coat and dress pants, except that she is speaking angrily in a language I can't understand.  Each sentence seems to end in a series of repeated words: "lucka lucka lucka."  Maybe she is praying, but she continues to speak occasionally after she has put the beads into her cloth purse, looking around sharply.  No one seems to acknowledge this behavior.  I wonder which one of us is crazy. 

I walk out of the subway into the spring light and I am suddenly in several places: I am in midtown New York on a Monday morning in March, in need of some coffee.  I am in the cloisters in the fall before the weather had gotten too cold, sitting on a wooden bench in the shade.  I am at Rice University, standing in front of the common rooms with my best friend before class.  I am in Houston in the Sixth Ward walking down the street to the coffee shop on a mild winter day with my coworkers, laughing about something.

I love this in-between weather, the cool air and the sun that makes me happy to be where I am and pulls me into the past, reminds me of all the days that felt just like this day, cool and sunny and open.

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