Stream of Consciousness

She sat next to me in the DMV waiting for her number to come up. We'd been married for thirteen years, parents now of three boys. "When are you gonna give me a girl?" she asks quite frequently, kinda funnin' me for laziness. One's life sorta snaps into focus waiting in a public place with hundreds of others to observe and ruminate upon. Why does that young man standing up because all the chairs are taken, have three rings in his lower lips? and why is he massaging the flabby neck of his father? Another, older man is sitting on my other side from my wife; he says that the wait is like being in Hell. "The difference," I say, being older and therefore theoretically wiser, "is that you have the option of making it Heaven." To my surprise, and pleasure, he good-naturedly agrees with that. Only high class people go to the DMV.

I sneak peeks at her. Today she's wearing her hair in a bun, drawn back with I know not what. Her skull is unbelievably perfect, a work of art, a sculpture; too bad I'm not Picasso to explain in graphics why perfection shows up in a head, it's shape and mass. When I first saw her at the airport, after twenty hours in a plane, I reluctantly admit even to myself that I was taken aback, on some primal level, by how dark she was. Today she's not so dark; she's been living in a more moderate climate. Race, you can become enlightened, but you can never completely escape the clutches of race awareness: it's in our genes mostly for good, survival and hybrid vigor, base stuff it's best not to deny, and best to never admit to in public. The beauty of her head is a product of the sum of its parts, their appropriateness with all the rest of the parts. She does not believe she is beautiful; the reason might be that she doesn't look like anyone else. Gradually she just might be getting it because as the boys grow she sees herself reflected back and she smiles. Ya gotta see that smile: perfect teeth and perfect gums pink, pink, pink, all lovely pink.

Now don't go gossiping to her that I talked about her to strangers.  The early birds are making more racket now the light is coming. 'God's in His Heaven, and all's right with the world.'

Barry