A Study of Tree Shadows and Strange Musicians
After work the other day I came across some beautiful tree shadows. Luckily, I had my camera on me. A well prepared person should always have a camera on them. One never knows what she will encounter in a day. If more people lived by this philosophy, maybe there would already be convincing photographic evidence that Bigfoot exists.
There was a man I saw recently banging on random objects on the sidewalk with a stick. He hit the stick against a garbage can and it boomed with a low reverberation. He hit it against the side of a building and it thunked. He hit it against the pole I was leaning against and it chimed. When I first saw him, he reminded me of someone from the medieval days using a divining rod to find water. But then I wondered if he was searching for a certain sound, or if he was trying to make a melody using only the street and a stick.
He was a bearded man with slumped shoulders and brown eyes that he thought of as hazel. I know he thought of them as hazel because he told me that he and I had matching hazel eyes. My eyes are not hazel either, or brown, they are blue. But maybe this man is colorblind and the whole world is varying shades of hazel to him.
But that is not how the conversations started. The conversation started with him asking me if I like narwhals. I am enthusiastic about all animals, including narwhals. I was waiting for the bus and usually I do not want to talk to strangers while I wait. I prefer to listen to music, look at my phone, daydream or read. But how often is one asked to sing the praises of narwhals? It is hard to resist a conversation with a fellow narwhal enthusiast. So I said yes, I like narwhals. Later in the conversation he said something really poetic involving narwhals. It was a strangely warm and windy night, the type of weather that is a relief after the back and forth between extremely cold temperatures and rainstorms we'd been having. He said that days like that feel like being a narwhal swimming in a cold sea and then finally breaking the surface of the water to breath in balmy midnight air. That's not a direct quote, but it was something like that.
My bus was late, so this bearded, brown eyed stick-musician-of-the-street had a while to talk to me, although, mostly he talked at me. He talked about Robin Williams and a conspiracy theory he had about his death, he talked about his feelings about war, he talked about Harry Houdini and how he was no ordinary man. Sometimes, bus stop conversations with strangers can be awkward, but this guy was so enthusiastic and jovially opinionated about so many topics that it was interesting talking to him. Bus stop man also claimed to be psychic and made various predictions to when a bus would arrive. I wasn't timing him, so I don't know how accurate his predictions were. He suggested to me that I should be a teacher. I don't know if this was one of his psychic predictions, or just a general suggestion.
My bus finally arrived and before I got on it, the talkative man said that he loves moms and daughters and that I should tell my mom that I met a really cool guy today.
There was a man I saw recently banging on random objects on the sidewalk with a stick. He hit the stick against a garbage can and it boomed with a low reverberation. He hit it against the side of a building and it thunked. He hit it against the pole I was leaning against and it chimed. When I first saw him, he reminded me of someone from the medieval days using a divining rod to find water. But then I wondered if he was searching for a certain sound, or if he was trying to make a melody using only the street and a stick.
He was a bearded man with slumped shoulders and brown eyes that he thought of as hazel. I know he thought of them as hazel because he told me that he and I had matching hazel eyes. My eyes are not hazel either, or brown, they are blue. But maybe this man is colorblind and the whole world is varying shades of hazel to him.
But that is not how the conversations started. The conversation started with him asking me if I like narwhals. I am enthusiastic about all animals, including narwhals. I was waiting for the bus and usually I do not want to talk to strangers while I wait. I prefer to listen to music, look at my phone, daydream or read. But how often is one asked to sing the praises of narwhals? It is hard to resist a conversation with a fellow narwhal enthusiast. So I said yes, I like narwhals. Later in the conversation he said something really poetic involving narwhals. It was a strangely warm and windy night, the type of weather that is a relief after the back and forth between extremely cold temperatures and rainstorms we'd been having. He said that days like that feel like being a narwhal swimming in a cold sea and then finally breaking the surface of the water to breath in balmy midnight air. That's not a direct quote, but it was something like that.
My bus was late, so this bearded, brown eyed stick-musician-of-the-street had a while to talk to me, although, mostly he talked at me. He talked about Robin Williams and a conspiracy theory he had about his death, he talked about his feelings about war, he talked about Harry Houdini and how he was no ordinary man. Sometimes, bus stop conversations with strangers can be awkward, but this guy was so enthusiastic and jovially opinionated about so many topics that it was interesting talking to him. Bus stop man also claimed to be psychic and made various predictions to when a bus would arrive. I wasn't timing him, so I don't know how accurate his predictions were. He suggested to me that I should be a teacher. I don't know if this was one of his psychic predictions, or just a general suggestion.
My bus finally arrived and before I got on it, the talkative man said that he loves moms and daughters and that I should tell my mom that I met a really cool guy today.