(no subject)
"Hold, hold up."
The stranger crosses the street as I put on the breaks and come to a full stop, resting my foot on the sidewalk.
"You should be wearing a helmet."
I should. I forgot it at home. I could look up at him and tell him just that, try and be friendly or charming or congenial, but I avert my eyes and instead direct my gaze at the ground in feigned indifference, while mumbling what must sound like a half-hearted apology. As he walks away I press hard on the pedal and glide on down the road. Tears swell in my eyes and I feel like a little kid who just got caught doing something she shouldn't have been doing, the kind of kid who stares off into space with a stubborn gaze while she's being scolded and then goes off on her own and cries her heart out about the whole thing for half an hour. I don't know why it bothers me so much now.
I ride up to the crosswalk and press the button, and then sit and wait for the light to change. I flinch as the cars whiz by. Their whizzing seems so harsh, so brutal to me at this moment. Each one--it's like they see me and then they pass by with that dull, insensitive rumble of an engine and hiss of rubber tire on the pavement. I've never noticed how fast they go by before. It's like being caught in a cloud of seagulls fleeing a sudden danger; the careless beating of wings and an abrupt rush of air and feathers. I hold my breath and close my eyes as the cars finally stop and it's my turn to walk, and then I begin to pedal as fast as I can to the other side. People stick their hands and heads out of the car windows, yelling things to each other and at me, cursing the traffic and blaring horns. It seems to me the street will never end, but it does and I ride away from the noise of the intersection into the quiet suburban street.
I miss the ocean. I miss that cold chasm of infinity, the dark velvet blue that catches the image of the hovering skies, the shimmering fabric that immerses all existance within its unfathomable depths. There is something comforting about a neverending body of water, something peaceful about the idea of it being completely connected. While continents are shattered fragments of land, the ocean is united and complete, it is whole. Its waves fan out over the sandy beaches in playful consistency, retreating only to approach again, dying only to be reborn. This immense creature only answers to the call of the moon at twilight, also constant, also faithful. The moon sings sweetly and the ocean reaches out for her in solemn longing. That is all that exists with the power to move the ocean, this distant love, and that can only stretch it but a few feet. Otherwise it is resting, it is unbounded, it is free. To look upon the ocean, to tread upon its waves, to taste its salt is to cast a footprint in clay and display it on the wall as if to say, "Oh, but you once were free. You once looked and tread upon freedom, you once tasted the absurd and the unbounded, you once ran down an endless beach without ever looking back..."
But I am in a world of streets and corners, cars and rules and bicycle helmets. I am trapped inside a detailed map, where every street has a name, where I have to wait at each crosswalk. In this world of placid houses of pale pastel, rooftops shining in the afternoon sun--in this world there is a right way to walk and a right time to cross, and everything that begins must also come to an end. This world is constantly polluted with the smog of destitute and despair, and apathy, and caution. Sweet incense of anything beautiful, the jasmine of hope and the lavender of some lovely emotion, are trapped in little bottles and wait on the shelf of the corner drug store, next to the aromatherapy oils and the bach flower remedies. They are carefully preserved, weighed to the exact, and sold in small quantities to those who can afford it. There is nothing left to explore here; here, nothing is left to chance. But in the ocean there are as many possibilities as there are drops of water, glittering and exploding into many particles of light.
With restlessness only accentuated by the collecting summer heat, I let my bike fall on the grass of a nearby park and sit down on a swing just to think. I remember an old song I used to know about swings that sprouted wings and flew away, carrying their passengers with them and I find myself wishing it was more than a children's tale. I sit and swing softly through the balmy air, longing for some sort of escape.
And onto the swing next to mine sits down a woman dressed in a long black skirt, with a shawl around her head despite the heat. In her arms is a little child, not a baby but perhaps a very young toddler. I gaze at them a while and ask if it's a boy.
"Yes," his mother replies, smiling at me and then lifting him up a little. He has a full head of curly brown hair that glows a with a dove-like softness in the sunlight. "His name is Jaja."
She gazes up at him proudly and then kisses him softly on the forehead. He is thirteen months old, he doesn't walk or talk yet but he's very smart, she tells me, and he's very beautiful too, she says while turning his head towards me so I can see his little smiling face. He looks so happy about something, with his big brown curls and tiny mouth the color of a pale rose. And his eyes! If there's anything that captures me about people it's their eyes, that is if they're beautiful, and his are. They are a very intense sort of hazelnut brown, round and wide open with long dark brown lashes. And they are pure and endless, infinitely innocent, yet it seems to me he knows more than I could ever aspire to know about this world when he looks at me. In his eyes I catch a glimpse of the ocean; they reflect a different, a more beautiful, a more complete world than the one I have grown accustomed to. Jaja knows what I have forgotten--he knows infinite, boundless love--his mother's love, the world's love for him and his hazelnut eyes. His gaze blesses whatever it falls upon with his untarnished love for all that is around him. In his eyes there lie as many possibilities as there are tears left for him to cry, and through it all he smiles at me and then puts his arms around his mother's neck.
And because I look at him, in that one moment where his gaze falls upon me, I see the ocean again. There rest the sands and the waves and the placid beaches at sunset, and the dark shadows of the unexplored depths. For one moment I too can be part of his perfect, mysterious world.
As I wave goodbye to him and his mother and watch him be placed in a stroller and rolled gently down the block, I realize again the painful truth that now I miss those eyes as much as I miss the ocean. But you know what's different? He let me see again the hazy reflection of what might still be. In the sweet innocence of Jaja's face there is a sort of naive hope for all the strangers and the maps, all the names and the crosswalks, a hope in that one day we may forget all these rules and set ourselves free.
You know what made me laugh though? That many years from now, more than a decade from now, when we're all older and have left the streets of San Jose buried in the sands of our past, that somewhere, a girl will fall in love with a boy who hides the ocean in his hazelnut eyes.
The stranger crosses the street as I put on the breaks and come to a full stop, resting my foot on the sidewalk.
"You should be wearing a helmet."
I should. I forgot it at home. I could look up at him and tell him just that, try and be friendly or charming or congenial, but I avert my eyes and instead direct my gaze at the ground in feigned indifference, while mumbling what must sound like a half-hearted apology. As he walks away I press hard on the pedal and glide on down the road. Tears swell in my eyes and I feel like a little kid who just got caught doing something she shouldn't have been doing, the kind of kid who stares off into space with a stubborn gaze while she's being scolded and then goes off on her own and cries her heart out about the whole thing for half an hour. I don't know why it bothers me so much now.
I ride up to the crosswalk and press the button, and then sit and wait for the light to change. I flinch as the cars whiz by. Their whizzing seems so harsh, so brutal to me at this moment. Each one--it's like they see me and then they pass by with that dull, insensitive rumble of an engine and hiss of rubber tire on the pavement. I've never noticed how fast they go by before. It's like being caught in a cloud of seagulls fleeing a sudden danger; the careless beating of wings and an abrupt rush of air and feathers. I hold my breath and close my eyes as the cars finally stop and it's my turn to walk, and then I begin to pedal as fast as I can to the other side. People stick their hands and heads out of the car windows, yelling things to each other and at me, cursing the traffic and blaring horns. It seems to me the street will never end, but it does and I ride away from the noise of the intersection into the quiet suburban street.
I miss the ocean. I miss that cold chasm of infinity, the dark velvet blue that catches the image of the hovering skies, the shimmering fabric that immerses all existance within its unfathomable depths. There is something comforting about a neverending body of water, something peaceful about the idea of it being completely connected. While continents are shattered fragments of land, the ocean is united and complete, it is whole. Its waves fan out over the sandy beaches in playful consistency, retreating only to approach again, dying only to be reborn. This immense creature only answers to the call of the moon at twilight, also constant, also faithful. The moon sings sweetly and the ocean reaches out for her in solemn longing. That is all that exists with the power to move the ocean, this distant love, and that can only stretch it but a few feet. Otherwise it is resting, it is unbounded, it is free. To look upon the ocean, to tread upon its waves, to taste its salt is to cast a footprint in clay and display it on the wall as if to say, "Oh, but you once were free. You once looked and tread upon freedom, you once tasted the absurd and the unbounded, you once ran down an endless beach without ever looking back..."
But I am in a world of streets and corners, cars and rules and bicycle helmets. I am trapped inside a detailed map, where every street has a name, where I have to wait at each crosswalk. In this world of placid houses of pale pastel, rooftops shining in the afternoon sun--in this world there is a right way to walk and a right time to cross, and everything that begins must also come to an end. This world is constantly polluted with the smog of destitute and despair, and apathy, and caution. Sweet incense of anything beautiful, the jasmine of hope and the lavender of some lovely emotion, are trapped in little bottles and wait on the shelf of the corner drug store, next to the aromatherapy oils and the bach flower remedies. They are carefully preserved, weighed to the exact, and sold in small quantities to those who can afford it. There is nothing left to explore here; here, nothing is left to chance. But in the ocean there are as many possibilities as there are drops of water, glittering and exploding into many particles of light.
With restlessness only accentuated by the collecting summer heat, I let my bike fall on the grass of a nearby park and sit down on a swing just to think. I remember an old song I used to know about swings that sprouted wings and flew away, carrying their passengers with them and I find myself wishing it was more than a children's tale. I sit and swing softly through the balmy air, longing for some sort of escape.
And onto the swing next to mine sits down a woman dressed in a long black skirt, with a shawl around her head despite the heat. In her arms is a little child, not a baby but perhaps a very young toddler. I gaze at them a while and ask if it's a boy.
"Yes," his mother replies, smiling at me and then lifting him up a little. He has a full head of curly brown hair that glows a with a dove-like softness in the sunlight. "His name is Jaja."
She gazes up at him proudly and then kisses him softly on the forehead. He is thirteen months old, he doesn't walk or talk yet but he's very smart, she tells me, and he's very beautiful too, she says while turning his head towards me so I can see his little smiling face. He looks so happy about something, with his big brown curls and tiny mouth the color of a pale rose. And his eyes! If there's anything that captures me about people it's their eyes, that is if they're beautiful, and his are. They are a very intense sort of hazelnut brown, round and wide open with long dark brown lashes. And they are pure and endless, infinitely innocent, yet it seems to me he knows more than I could ever aspire to know about this world when he looks at me. In his eyes I catch a glimpse of the ocean; they reflect a different, a more beautiful, a more complete world than the one I have grown accustomed to. Jaja knows what I have forgotten--he knows infinite, boundless love--his mother's love, the world's love for him and his hazelnut eyes. His gaze blesses whatever it falls upon with his untarnished love for all that is around him. In his eyes there lie as many possibilities as there are tears left for him to cry, and through it all he smiles at me and then puts his arms around his mother's neck.
And because I look at him, in that one moment where his gaze falls upon me, I see the ocean again. There rest the sands and the waves and the placid beaches at sunset, and the dark shadows of the unexplored depths. For one moment I too can be part of his perfect, mysterious world.
As I wave goodbye to him and his mother and watch him be placed in a stroller and rolled gently down the block, I realize again the painful truth that now I miss those eyes as much as I miss the ocean. But you know what's different? He let me see again the hazy reflection of what might still be. In the sweet innocence of Jaja's face there is a sort of naive hope for all the strangers and the maps, all the names and the crosswalks, a hope in that one day we may forget all these rules and set ourselves free.
You know what made me laugh though? That many years from now, more than a decade from now, when we're all older and have left the streets of San Jose buried in the sands of our past, that somewhere, a girl will fall in love with a boy who hides the ocean in his hazelnut eyes.