Here’s one little fraction of my day: (although, I must admit I’ve never been great at math. I could be, if I tried. I was at times. Seventh grade, I was in advanced algebra. Slept through class with my ass way beyond the seat and my neck resting where my lower back should have been. I still got A’s, and that’s probably when I realized I could afford to not care that much. After that, the only classes I struggled in or ever had to retake were those that had to do with numbers and formulas.
I wrote an essay in place of a statistics test once, “I’m sorry that I don’t care more,” my test said, “I sit in your class and watch people instead, think about their little movements and what they mean, think up stories behind the movement of their barely noticeable artificial shadows.” I failed and got a post-it note that said, “Maybe you are in the wrong major. If you need to talk, please come see me in my office.” I was in love at the time, how could formulas compare?)
I walked through the boulevard, which looks like this: street one way, split by a large red-brick ‘middlewalk’ lined by very tall trees and the occasional flower stand or fountain, then an opposite-headed rush of traffic. It was dry and walkable and even sunny at times, for the first time since my return. I was singing along to a song I didn’t actually know all the lyrics to but I tried anyway, stumbling over my (their) words and feeling happy that no one was around to hear me or correct me. I had just finished a perfectly lemon-flavored popsicle and was on my way to a cafe to have a hookah and write some words before the rain eventually showed up again. A bald man, young, about my age, half-glanced at me. We passed each other wordlessly, just fractions of each others’ day, lives.
