It is a little past 3:20. I am sitting at a round table outside the
Barnes & Noble at the Pruneyard shopping center drinking a tall cup of
black coffee. The sun is shining brightly though I am sitting in the
shade. The floor beneath me is yellow brick paving stones. The table
and the chair are green wrought iron. There is a very slight cool
breeze.
From head to toe I am wearing a gray sweater with a pair of thin
white horizontal stripes across my chest. Beneath the sweater a dark
blue casual shirt, with buttons. Blue jeans, worn and comfortable.
Gray cotton boxers. A broad brown leather belt with a simple D buckle.
White athletic socks. My old brown cowboy boots, propped up on a empty
chair. My watch on my left wrist. A simple silver wring with seven
Celtic spirals on my right ring finger. My sunglasses on the table top.
Somewhere in the distance one of the stores is playing music, but it
is soft enough I can not tell you the songs being played. People walk
by and shreds of conversation waft past with them.
They talk of movies. They talk of houses. They talk school. They talk
of family. They talk of washing walls. They talk of dresses.
Sometimes they acknowledge me as they pass. Sometimes a nod. Sometimes
a hello. Twice short and incidental conversations. The clerk in the
boutique to my left came out for her cigarette break and we exhanged
pleasantries. A man on a cell phone, engrossed is his conversation
does not notice his dog has stretched himself to the end of his leash
to sniff me carefully and let me pet him up the head.
A man stops behind me to light a cigarette and carry on an animated
conversation in Farsi about an injured friend who needs skin grafts.
I sit. I drink my coffee. Life flows around me.
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