Rhythm, Color, & Rhyme

There were pots and pans, a few crates strategically positioned, here a metal tin can, there an ordinary plastic bucket. I watched as he set them up, watched his quick rimshots and adjustments, watched his fills, then watched him shift around his set with intention and method. It was soothing standing there, just barely hidden by a concrete barrier on which was bolted the handrails of the stairs emerging from below. I had just delivered my mail to the post office.

I had just emerged from a line. Have you ever been in a long, long line and been entertained by the oddities and particulars of others, confused and intrigued by their ways of preparing this and expressing that? I was shocked as the fellow behind me cursed to himself with a peculiar tone of anger, laced with a sort of cynical disregard for not just the length of the line, but for the presence of other people around him. Something of it smacked of the sort of peculiarity that you don't just find offensive, but interesting beyond all interests. I shuffled backward a step, ever-so-slightly, just enough to hear his words more clearly but not quite enough to upset him. Apparently, though, it did upset him when one of the two ladies behind him, as she jabbered away, a bit muddled herself, accidentally stepped sideways into his shoulder just enough to earn a hearty bellow and a quick shake from the poor, irritable fellow.

This is the point at which I began to spasm out some short, constrained giggles, turning ever-so-carefully to catch a glimpse of the scene. It had not occurred to me that, in so doing, I would begin to hear with greater clarity the varied tones and utterances throughout the entire length of the line. I began to take in one of the most colorful, entrancing, and entertaining scenes of interpersonal encounters I have ever witnessed. I spun around even further to look straight-faced into the cynical chap behind me, smiled from ear to ear, said 'hello there,' and realized that I was witnessing a field trip of one of the local inpatient shelters for the mentally-troubled. I have never felt so comfortable waiting for so long to send my posts. Oliver Sacks and I are both so deeply fascinated by the truthfulness of the reality of the 'disturbed.' There is something so lacking in both pretention and modesty that we could glory in if only our veil could be lifted.

And so I just had to stand there, in the shadows, so satisfied in a task well done, and so moved by the colorful foreground of a Jamaican street musician against the grayish composites of a seemingly dreary April sky. The beats were at once sullen and tranquil, full of repose. His eyes beamed joy. And that is when I heard the soundtrack of this organic day of rhythm, color, and rhyme. "Don't worry (boom, boom), about a thing (boom, boom, boom) CAUSE EVERY LITTLE THING (boom) is GONNA BE ALRIGHT..."

As I walked north on University Way, I could feel the cool breeze and see the beginning movements of a springtime long-forgotten, as when Aslan employed the Deep Magic to reverse the evils of a Winter that was never Christmas. It had been some time since I had breathed in the warm vapors of Indian curry alongside Thai spice and homemade teriyaki masterpieces like seared salmon fillet with cucumber dressing. It had been an extended wait, filled with longing and many hopes for return, since I had looked along the fountain alley toward that great 'Mount which one can only see with Spring's eyes. And that is where the cherry blossoms grow full with shape and color and scent, like their homeland.

A young homeless couple sat distracted in a card game and conversation with their cardboard sign that indicated a tragedy meant to encourage personal donations, successfully meant to make me smerk: "Ninjas killed my parents."

An acapella singer stomped and clapped along my way. He was stamping out his weariness and belting out for hope, oppressed. "Lean on me (bomp) when you're not stro-hong (uh!) and I'll be your friend (YEAH) I'll help you carry oooonnnn (clap)..." You know, there's something inside that feels foundationally pathetic when, in the midst of pure healing, when you can feel the pains warming into tingles and the cold silence welling into innermost peace, when you actually begin to sing a new tune, you keep walking, walking by him and his pain and his harmonies and his oppression...and not even saying 'hello.'

Upon the invitation of the white-lit icon of the pedestrian, I almost stepped into the open crosswalk, but I halted just long enough for a large Ram truck to leap over the intersection, scraping a bundle of metal bars that were his cargo onto the hill of his ascendence, right where my foot was about to step. The guy next to me turned toward me, and we laughed together at what seemed like the pure comedy of a nervous encounter with death.

And I smiled and walked with him across the walk, back to work, back to joy, back home.