Monday, October 8, 2007

I still don't get the bit about the "Tina Turner trees"

Everybody has his thing. I mean to say: there are so many people, and so many things, and each one has his own. Early on a Sunday morning at the Santa Monica Pier, earlier than the tourists and the hot dogs and the shopping bags, there is the man doing tai chi and the woman doing yoga. There is the group on the uneven parallel bars and the fat white lady running up and down the wooden steps in time to the barked commands of the big, big black man with the whistle. There are the bikes, the rollerblades, the recumbents. There are almost no skateboards; they come later in the day. There are the treasure-seekers, the metal-detectors, the diviners. There is the man lifting weights - how has he gotten them here? There are the gymnasts and the boxers and the sit-uppers and the push-uppers and the pull-uppers. I mean to say: there are the sitters-up and the pushers-up and the pullers-up. And today, there is a lost, lonely girl, walking slowly, thinking quickly, wanting much. I mean to say: today there is me.

1 comment:

Briane said...

You paint a great picture... but why were you lonely?

The librarian action figure, by the way, is at:

http://www.mcphee.com/laf/

Thanks for reading, and I hope your day got better.