Perched

The last sound I hear is the ding of the elevator. I descend 5 floors, then exit the building and walk to the subway. I’m reeling from the weight of the conversation I’ve just had. I’m wondering where to go for dinner. My feet hurt a little bit and, come to think of it, I’m not really hungry. I check to see if I have any new Slack messages. I contemplate calling Ryan. I worry about the news I have to deliver on a conference call tomorrow. I wonder who the democratic nominee will be and how bad corona virus will get. I make a mental note to text my sister-in-law to see what time she wants to get together after work tomorrow. I realize I don’t have my subway card. 

No more than two minutes have passed since I left my office building. I haven’t seen or heard anything since I slid the glass door of my office shut. I am no where in particular, except in my own head.

I am not getting on the subway.

Instead, I wander to a favorite wine shop. They pour by the glass and I think I might like one, but once inside I see that there’s a tasting happening and it’s packed, so I browse then leave, still not sure where I’m going. I’ll walk half a mile to Verjus, I decide.

I cross the street. A man is standing on a statue playing a violin. This is the Admission Day Monument, commemorating the day that California became the 31st state. The statue is just over 30 feet tall. The base of the statue is about six feet high and that’s where the man is perched. The base is a rectangle. He is on one side. A miner is on another.

I stop. I stare. I look around. Others have stopped too. The music halts us; the man on the statue halts us.

Next thing I know I’m sitting on nearby steps next to a girl in a leather jacket with black hair in a blunt bob smoking a cigarette. We are listening. A fellow stops and asks if he can buy a cigarette from her. No, sorry man, she says, then leans to me and confides, usually I just give people cigarettes, but he really interrupted my moment, you know? I nod.

We keep listening. Our eyes well up. Soon we are both weeping. We notice the moon above the statue. I can see my office building just beyond the man’s perch. 

We are at the corner of Market and Montgomery. For the first time all day, I know exactly where I am.

Why are my eyes welling up? I try to explain it away. The truest thing is that I don’t know why this music matters, but it does and deeply.

The people keep stopping. They aren’t getting on the subway either. They listen and drop money in the performer’s bucket.

Maybe this is the true work of the creative:  to stop us in our tracks. To use Anne Lamott’s phrase, to help us steal our lives back. From the prescribed dream, from should, from the existential angst, from the unidentified pavement and the conveyor belt that is our commute, from the echo chamber of our angst and worry and fret.

To help us steal away. 

To help us steal back.

To scent and sound and space and time. To heart. To desire. To here.

If you were to encounter the truly beautiful, where would it send you spinning to?

What’s yours for the taking?