Dear Seymour,
Dear Seymour,
All I want to say is, I hope you found it. I wouldn't have known to say it when I saw you, but that's all I want to say.
It was 14 March 2001. Days of rain had flooded the Chattahoochee River and left the air infested with water. The sun shone like a low-watt bulb under a oversized shade in the corner of a low room. The river slurped up the already muddy banks, sloshed over the Riverwalk, shook its chocolate-colored fists at the Dillingham Street bridge, which it sought to overtake but did not. There's a total of ten dams in the river between Atlanta and Columbus, but that day the river nearly won. I met you there by the river, as you watched it roil and froth. You were distracted, a bit restless, but calm. I thought then, and I still do think, something sat heavy on you and in my naivety I thought you were homeless but I should have known from looking at you that you were, in fact, homeless only in a metaphysical sense, for I think now that part of you was peregrinating at that moment--concerned by what, over what, I don't know. Now I see part of you was reaching up for a handhold by which to pull the rest of you up.
I asked to take your photo, you abided and afterward you wanted to talk, but I did not want to talk, and so we talked without doing so, something about the river, something about the flood, something about the weather, then we traded names and shook hands. The skin of your palm was hard. I bicycled away. Here is what I photographed that day after finishing with you: a no-parking sign in three feet of water, an inch-thin pipe with three spigots in it, broken glass from a boarded-up storefront, a windy phone booth with no phonebook in it, another man watching the wrath of the river. I can't remember his name. I stuck around downtown, I stuck around because I wanted to find you again, maybe talk this time, because I thought I wronged you with my brevity, because it isn't often a stranger wants to talk to you and it was plain that you wanted badly to talk, but every time I thought I saw you wandering around in the following weeks I was wrong. I wouldn't have known to say it then--perhaps I would have offered some blanket encouragement, 'You're going to make it, man, you're going to be all right'--but all I want to tell you now is, I hope you found what you were looking for.
Sincerely,
AP Saulters
All I want to say is, I hope you found it. I wouldn't have known to say it when I saw you, but that's all I want to say.
It was 14 March 2001. Days of rain had flooded the Chattahoochee River and left the air infested with water. The sun shone like a low-watt bulb under a oversized shade in the corner of a low room. The river slurped up the already muddy banks, sloshed over the Riverwalk, shook its chocolate-colored fists at the Dillingham Street bridge, which it sought to overtake but did not. There's a total of ten dams in the river between Atlanta and Columbus, but that day the river nearly won. I met you there by the river, as you watched it roil and froth. You were distracted, a bit restless, but calm. I thought then, and I still do think, something sat heavy on you and in my naivety I thought you were homeless but I should have known from looking at you that you were, in fact, homeless only in a metaphysical sense, for I think now that part of you was peregrinating at that moment--concerned by what, over what, I don't know. Now I see part of you was reaching up for a handhold by which to pull the rest of you up.
I asked to take your photo, you abided and afterward you wanted to talk, but I did not want to talk, and so we talked without doing so, something about the river, something about the flood, something about the weather, then we traded names and shook hands. The skin of your palm was hard. I bicycled away. Here is what I photographed that day after finishing with you: a no-parking sign in three feet of water, an inch-thin pipe with three spigots in it, broken glass from a boarded-up storefront, a windy phone booth with no phonebook in it, another man watching the wrath of the river. I can't remember his name. I stuck around downtown, I stuck around because I wanted to find you again, maybe talk this time, because I thought I wronged you with my brevity, because it isn't often a stranger wants to talk to you and it was plain that you wanted badly to talk, but every time I thought I saw you wandering around in the following weeks I was wrong. I wouldn't have known to say it then--perhaps I would have offered some blanket encouragement, 'You're going to make it, man, you're going to be all right'--but all I want to tell you now is, I hope you found what you were looking for.
Sincerely,
AP Saulters