Old Man Winter

The first day of winter lived up to its name and blew in gusty, wet and chilly. The air around the river was chillier still, and forced me to seek refuge behind a wall instead of my normal post at the side rail where I can watch the propellers churn the Mississippi into chocolate milk with a white froth topping.

Two other cyclists kept me company as we huddled behind the stairwell. I was the only one with a rain jacket on, and I pulled the strings by my neck to tighten the hood around me. It only drew the hood further into my face, blocking my vision and tangling my hair, so eventually I gave up and conceded victory to the winter. The man beside me was in shirt sleeves. He was old and gnarled, one shoulder tilted at an unnatural angle high above the other. His beard was grey, which made him look tired. He saw me fiddling with my jacket and laughed, "You look like a Christmas elf with that red jacket." I turned toward him when he spoke and smelled liquor, not from his breath, per say, but emanating from him, like he'd taken a bath a couple of days before in a smoky, sickly sweet concoction. We proceeded to chat about Christmas and he insisted that the song had it backwards, and that only the naughty people seemed to get what they wanted. People who tried to be nice, like he was nice, never found themselves with the good things. He was a good-natured fellow in spite of the fact that he never got what he wanted on account of being so nice and all, but as he laughed and carried on, I noticed that his smile never got to his eyes.

Have you seen these people?

In her book, Down By the River, Edna O'Brien writes,

"There is really no such thing as youth, there is only luck, and the enormity of something which can happen, whence a person, any person, is brought deeper and more profoundly into sorrow, and once they have gone there, they can't come back, they have to live in it, live in that dark, and find some glimmer in it."

Once you know where to look, you can spot them pretty easily. Their eyes are drawn together just a bit at the outside corners, like they are squinting ever so slightly to improve their focus. There must be a million ways sorrow comes to the human race, and each story is a private etching that lives on so many of the faces we pass every day. We try to ignore it as best we can, but once you understand where to look, you see them every place you go.

For some, the stories of their lives take them to unexpected places. Places where people find themselves talking to an elf in a red jacket, drunk as a skunk though it's just past noon. Or on the side of a highway, holding a sign that declares you are hungry and need change for food. And maybe you do. Who am I to judge that you would use it to buy mad dog instead? And so, when the line of cars won't let me in to their lane, when the drivers coming out of the mall drive past and speed up just a little, pretending not to see me so they don't have to let me in and risk missing the light;  when, after an eternity, someone finally lets me in, but not before I feel anger and frustration rising in me over something as silly as this,  when I see you standing there by the road and roll down my window to give you three ones, it's not actually to ease just your own sorrow, but to help me remember that there is more to life than my own.

In the morning

Sometimes I swear this river sees inside me and unfurls her fingers of fog to wave at me and say, "I understand."

I saw a cotton candy sky

America's Most Wanted Pelican

This morning as I watched the pelicans glide past on their morning jaunt, one of the ferry employees, a gnarled white-haired older gent with a twinkle in his eye, came over to me and said “They don’t make good pets, you know. They’re real grumpy!” To which I replied, “What if they’re flying by saying the same thing about you right now?!”

“I AM grumpy!” said Mr. A. “I’m an old man!”

He continued, “But these pelicans is truly grumpy. One morning we pulled up to the dock and one of them sits on the ramp and won’t move. The cars can’t get off the boat cause that pelican, he won’t budge. So we called the cops on ‘im! And the cop shows up and he says, ‘you want me to do what now?’ and so he goes over to the pelican, who’s just sittin’ pretty on the ramp and he says, ‘Hey pelican! Get outta here! Go on and move now!’ But the pelican WON’T MOVE! We sat there for maybe 10 minutes just scratching our heads and finally that pelican, he spreads his wings and he just glides off. I think these pelicans come from Myrtle Beach, so I imagine that pelican was just tired and he needed to rest a little bit and ain’t nobody was gonna get him to move til he was good and ready.”

Yeah, you're so pelican fly. Uh-huh.

I wonder what it would be like to eat by diving face-first into your food.

Lately I haven’t spent a lot of my time people watching because I have fallen in love with a pelican I call Peter. Peter must live close to the ferry and he spars with it most mornings and afternoons, playing a pelican version of chicken, swooping in close to the rails, then landing with a web-footed splash into the river, letting the current carry him quickly downstream until a signal that I can’t recognize summons Peter to once again heave his mighty wings and flap back to the ferry, coming in close again, always eluding the lens of my camera in the process. A couple of days ago, Peter was simultaneously buzzing the boat and fishing. He’s a good multi-tasker, that Peter. And guess what? He got one! I spied from the railing and was close enough to see him swallow whatever it was in 2 gulps. I wonder what it would be like to eat by diving face-first into your food. Peter seems to be pretty satisfied with the set-up.

Until yesterday, Peter always seemed to be alone. But then, yesterday, while the morning fog was still rising from the river and the air was cool and smelled only faintly of diesel and garbage truck, I looked up and suddenly there were two! They took turns flying in close to the rails, then plopped down in the water with the bridge behind them, content, at least to my eyes. The second pelican is, of course, Paula.

Have you ever noticed that pelicans look like they are smiling while in flight? Not a grin, but more of a subtle, Mona Lisa smile that seems to say, “yeah, I’m flying, I’m gliding, I’m totally zen. I can see the whole world from here.”

Then I started to think that maybe I’ve finally gone off the deep end and that pelicans say nothing of the sort when they fly past me. So I of course turned to Google, typing in “pelican smile flying”. Here’s what came up:

"Super Bass"
by Nicki Minaj

...I said, excuse me, you're a hell of a dime
I mean my, my, my, you're like pelican fly
I mean, you're so shy and I'm loving your smile
You're like slicker than the girl with the thing on his eye, oh
Yes I did, yes I did, somebody please tell him who the F I is.
T.D.F mack them chicks up, back coupes up, and chuck the deuce up

I have no idea what that means. I assume someone who is pelican fly is awesome, right?

So much for Google. And the future of pop music.

Waldo is on the West Bank

Sometimes I wonder if riding the ferry is like standing in an elevator or peeing at a urinal (I'm using this particular example based on heresay, mind you) -- maybe people just don't like to talk on the ferry. Oh, if you say hi and strike up a conversation, most people are happy to chat, but for the most part, the regular biking crowd that I see every morning and afternoon mostly passes their ferry time tapping away on their phones. Now, I am a smart phone geek myself, but I don't allow the phone to come out on the ferry. I suppose I can't fault people for not using the ride as an experiment in observation. (Or maybe one day I will come across a blog with a post about a really annoying talkative chick on the ferry. )

It's their loss. I wonder if anyone saw the pigeon that flew on at Algiers this morning and hitched a ride all the way across the river, walking on the deck and pecking at crumbs. I wonder if anyone noticed how the waves on the water this evening consisted of perfect undulating ripples as if the Mississippi was made of twilight silk. I wonder if anyone else was elated to realize upon seeing the man with a long coat, big black glasses and a pointed red knit cap that they had, in fact, finally found Waldo.