Perfect Days

In an ode to Wim Wenders, this morning I woke, checking myself in as safe and relatively healthy. My coffee was fresh, nearly immediate, and comforting. I walked to the beach, 153 steps, as regular readers know, and was greeted by lapping waves, curious seals, and dolphins arcing through the water. A volunteer from the seal refuge showed me a starfish clinging to the rocks exposed by low tide. Five fellow walkers nodded a hello, the kind accustomed to walkers of that place and hour. Two said good morning. Two curlews, balanced effortlessly on one leg, seemed to offer the same. It was approaching 7:30 am.

I felt privileged to live where I do. I have felt this same thing in Chicago, in Boulder, in Cincinnati, in San Francisco’s North Beach. I have felt it in Paris, in Mumbai, in Bucharest. The place changes. The noticing does not.

I took a walk downtown, finding myself at the local. Someone told a joke across the room, and the woman down the bar laughed, loud and unguarded. I was drawn to it. She wore glasses that glowed faintly in the dark, the cheap kind sold at a gift shop, and I found myself thinking of her, privately, as Elvis.

Within a minute she told me she had been diagnosed with cancer, recently, and that everything felt more vivid to her now, including someone else’s laugh, and the way it moved through a room like a stone dropped into still water.

Then the dark sense arrived, the one that politicians, the news, and the world’s ordinary tragedies parade in front of us. In a moment I turned sarcastic, thinking of place and privilege and how full of shit I am.

I have heard people with far less privilege than mine say the same thing, with more grace than I just did. These words are, in part, a permeation of theirs.

A cool breeze passed through, and Elvis, in her glow-in-the-dark glasses, left the room. She said she would like to read what I write.

Then, walking away, she said: “We’ll meet again before I go.”