The shouts and instructions of the players echo behind me, the language familiar but impenetrable. So many voices, so many people out on this day. A middle-aged man in a suit sits blowing soap bubbles. They drift away from him, rising above the pedestrians on the sidewalk beneath. Given breath, they hover there for a moment, an impossible glistening, before popping and vanishing into sky. It’s a beautiful spring day and people, optimistic after the long winter, are out in the sun. It’s a kind of parade, really, and every one of theses people is the star of their own movie, an unknowable plot churning within that’s just waiting to be realized.
A woman coasts on a bicycle. Her hair shorn down to a grey, jagged buzz. Something that indicates trauma. She slows, glances over to the stadium. It looks like she is going to smile, like maybe the day is a relief to her, too, like maybe all her suffering had been a passage to mercy. She twists her body and spits, a wild and violent hatred in her eyes.
A reminder.
Even on a day like this.
And past her, across the street, shaded by trees and the tall buildings surrounding it, is a little Parkette. A couple, barely visible, are about to sit on a bench. The ice cream cones they hold are a vivid white. They shine like torches. The pigeons, summoned, come softly down from hidden perches, landing like angels to feed on this mortal light.
Rachelle, Jones and I were in the backyard– the adults sipping coffee while Jones patrolled the U-shaped garden that frames the patio where we were sitting. Above us was an incredible canopy of leaves and branches. Somehow, it seemed a deeper and more vivid green than it should have been, and then, cutting through this foliage was the kind of sunlight that makes you think of Bible illustrations, and beyond that, nothing but the rich, blue infinity of a sky that knew everything.
Jones, propelling himself Fred Flinstone-style in a toy car he likes to play in, came over to us. He was the ice cream truck. Cheerfully, almost professionally, he offered us make-believe ice cream cones with make-believe sprinkles. His spontaneous joy in this theatre was a living, radiant thing, and the feeling it gave was not unlike if a deer had wandered into the yard and nuzzled us.
It felt that soft, that pure.
And then after a minute or two had passed, Jones stood up on the one step that leads from our apartment to the patio. The sun shone upon him like a spotlight, and an angelic babble issued forth as he waved his arms about like a preacher in full sermon. The language he was speaking was unknown to us, but it seemed like the right language, the one the voiceless world around him already seemed to understand, and the only one that corresponded to what was shining within.
I was sure Jones was performing a blessing, and it was humbling to feel just how lucky we were to be alive in this flimsy and glittering world, and to be lifted up beyond it by such small soft hands, even if just for a moment.
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