If asked what adjective would suit to describe this week and best lacquer it for posterity and commemoration, I suppose I’d choose: messy. Yes, it’s been a humdinger, where we adults in our orbits do our orbiting, consumed by all the jobs we need to do; then as we approach one another in the evenings, to compare notes on what he have (or haven’t) achieved that day, there is a low-hum, a gravitational tremor, that a loose word might upset as our planets pass. Tongues are bitten. Books are hidden in. We’re just tired.
This moment in Citizen Kane, one of my triumvirate of favourite movies, has always stayed with me. Today, as I drove over to Doncaster to check the car in for what turned out to be a non-regular service, I stopped at the red lights outside Westfield shopping centre. A workman was crossing the road in his King Gees gear, over which he wore a fluro red safety vest. At first sight, I thought, wow, that’s a prominent forehead, wrinkled despite his youth. Then he passed and I saw his face in profile, the lashes, the cheeks speckled with the beginnings of a beard, black, so very black like his hair. I then recounted my initial opinion, revised it, and thought, he has to be one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen. My neck turned to follow as he walked off, and I said a quiet goodbye. He didn’t even meet my eye. And then the light turned green and I drove away.
We all of us are lonely at times; we many of us who blog – I daresay – do so in the hopes of making connections we feel we lack or want to enlarge upon. Then when we don’t get what we’re seeking in return, there’s a crushing echo. I’ve felt it, I don’t know if you have. This is why when I have these moments, which are just that, nothing more, and I don’t see as creepy or stalker-like, I feel a little peace and reassurance. I smile and think of Bernstein.
