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| Continental Drift 25 x 30 cm acryl painting by Karin Goeppert |
SOME PEOPLE
I’VE SEEN
Yesterday,
for example, saw a woman
whose face went
back and forth
between
fear and bewilderment.
I’ll never
know her troubles,
I thought.
And what could I offer, if I did?
“Sex,”
whispered the male imperative, psychopathically
serene as ever.
Then enlightened self-interest slash good manners
kicked in
with: “Don’t stare, it’s rude. Mind your own business.”
When I
looked at her again, she was smiling, on the verge of laughter.
And
what’s up with the
man who camps
out in the park most nights? I’ll never
get close
enough to figure him out. An exchange
of words though
might be like slithering face-up under
miles of barbed
wire. No way out. However if you
are living in
a park, psychology no doubt’s been stripped
down to finding
shelter, a bite to eat. But what about those
potentially
reflective moments when he’s smoking
a cigarette
beneath his favorite tree? For his sake I hope
he mainly
thinks about supply issues. Where his next
smoke is
coming from. Bottle of lager. And not cause & effect.
One
bright June day last year
I spotted a
pretty girl seated atop a stack of pallets on a Berlin
sidewalk. A
fashionable boulevard. And there she was eating
from a
carton of strawberries with the abandon of a voluptuary,
a libertine
of fruit. But slowly, with care, every bite deeply
enjoyed, as
if nothing else in the world mattered. I couldn’t stop looking.
