Tag: Vignettes

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A Thousand Falling Shadows

On the street where I live #wny #winter #snow

 In old movies–especially the black-and-white noir films–you’ll often see someone standing under a streetlight. In the movies the streetlights always cast a distinctive pool of light below, with a relatively sharp boundary between the light and the darkness beyond. In reality, though, streetlights haven’t been like that for years, owing to the high-pressure sodium lamps used in modern streetlights. These lamps cast the familiar, ridiculously-bright light that spreads outward in all directions, fading at length.

Now, however, in the interests of energy efficiency, municipalities all over the country are switching from the high-pressure sodium lamps to energy-efficient LED fixtures. The LEDs really do cast distinctive pools of light below, with a relatively sharp boundary between the light and the darkness beyond. The light is a natural spectrum, thankfully, so the light doesn’t feel false–in fact, it feels even less false than the brilliant burning amber of the old lamps.

One thing you discover with LEDs is that unless they are filtered through frosted glass or something similar, their light is extremely directional, which means that shadows made in LED light tend to be very sharp and accurate. This was driven home for me tonight, when we walked our dogs as snow fell from the sky. It was a peaceful night, no breeze, so the snow was able to just flutter down to the ground on its own time and agenda. These are my favorite kinds of nights to walk, during the wintertime…and tonight I noticed something else, when we passed beneath the first of the new streetlights on our street.

The snowpile sparkled like snow usually does–but there was something else. Tiny shadows of darkness, all flitting in the same direction across the snow on the ground. It took me a minute to realize that I was seeing something I had never seen before, something I had never thought to see before. I was seeing the shadows of the snowflakes themselves, snowflakes casting their own shadows on their already-fallen brethren. I never thought for the tiniest of seconds that a snowflake could cast its own shadow.

But it turns out they do. And that, my friends, is a bit of magic.

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The Saxhole of Chestnut Ridge

Every Sunday I take the dee-oh-gee on a nature walk. We go to a local park, usually one of our local county or state parks; our most common destinations are Knox Farm State Park in East Aurora and Chestnut Ridge Park (a county park) in southern Orchard Park. Chestnut Ridge is a big park, set amidst several hillsides, with lots of hiking trails and old roads and ravines with babbling brooks along with shelters for families to rent for picnics and a huge hill that’s the region’s best place for sledding in winter and a noted disc-golf course. We like Chestnut Ridge a lot. We’ve been going there regularly ever since Cane became a member of the family, and we still haven’t seen all it has to offer.

In addition to nature, Chestnut Ridge also offers some interesting people watching on occasion. When we go on Sunday mornings, there are often large groups of young people jogging through the park, and a lot of them don’t restrict their jogging to the roads, but also to the off-road hiking trails. This is always fun to watch, and Cane enjoys seeing the runners go by. There are also always lots of people with other dogs, which can make Cane either happy or nervous, depending on the dog. There was one fat brown dog who just kind of waddled around, once; this dog’s name turned out to be “Ammo”, which led me to advance my Law Of Dog Names: The more bad-ass a name a dog has, the less bad-ass the dog actually is. So a dog named, oh, Crusher will be a big whimpering softie, while a dog named, oh, Frankie will be an ass-biting menace. It’s just the way things are.

This Sunday past, we saw several groups of joggers, including one older group and one younger group. We also walked past two middle-aged women who were talking very loudly about their own medical problems, and then we took a side road that led past a small playground where two teenagers, figuring they were alone, were making out quite nicely. (They stopped when they realized Cane and I were approaching, and I turned my gaze aside and left them to their youthful hormonal fun-having.)

People watching is fun, but the main reason I love these nature walks is the nature — especially the sounds. I love hearing the knocking of woodpeckers at work upon the trees. I love the sudden flutter in the air when a bird I didn’t even realize was there takes wing. I love the whispering as the trees rub against each other in the wind, and I love the rushing of the streams, even as by this time of year they have mostly dried up to little more than a few trickles, here and there. Aside from the occasional passing car or truck engine — and sometimes not even those, if we’re far enough from the roads — there are no man-made sounds at all, save my own footfalls and the soft jingling of the tags on Cane’s collar.

But today…we were on another road, heading back in the direction of the parking lot, when I heard…music.

Somewhere in the distance, music.

I couldn’t tell where or why, but as we kept walking, I realized we were getting closer to the source of the music. I recognized the tune first: “Amazing Grace”. And then, moving forward, I recognized the instrument. It was a saxophone. And the person playing it finished “Amazing Grace” and moved right on to “Onward Christian Soldiers”. And then followed several more hymns and other bits of Americana. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and eventually, “The Star Spangled Banner”. We came around a corner, and there he was, standing next to his parked car across the road. He had a music stand set up and everything. This guy was actually playing his saxophone in the middle of Chestnut Ridge Park, on a Sunday morning. And he was playing it loudly. His sound carried.

Now, I must admit that the sax has never been my favorite instrument, but like all instruments, it’s a pleasure when played well. This guy, unfortunately, was not very good. He wasn’t “rank beginner” awful, but he played a lot of wrong notes and…oh, the hell with it. It doesn’t matter how well he played. If Thelonius Monk himself decided to set up a solo show in the middle of Chestnut Ridge on a Sunday morning, it would have been every bit as annoying and inappropriate. I found myself finishing our walk in some disbelief that there exists some asshole who is sufficiently narcissistic to decide that what people going to one of our area’s finest nature parks really need is to listen to his not-very-good saxophone playing. Who on Earth possibly comes to that conclusion?

By the time his playing was finally fading from my ears as I and the dog achieved sufficient distance from him, he was playing “Over the Rainbow”. I got Cane back in the car, but instead of leaving the park, I drove back in. I wanted to see this clown closer up. I wasn’t going to yell out the window or throw garbage at him (though both were tempting prospects), but I wanted to see what kind of asshole does this. When I drove by his space, he had evidently decided that it was time to move on. His stand was gone, and he was leaning into the hatch of his little red car, putting away his horn after his presumably self-booked gig. Older guy. Skinny. Had his shorts pulled up oddly high, and socks up to his knees. There he was, evidently quite satisfied. He’d accomplished his mission, see, forcing himself upon everyone in earshot in a place where “in earshot” is a pretty large area.

As I drove home, I thought about the saxophone playing asshole…the sax asshole…the Saxhole. The Saxhole of Chestnut Ridge.

I’m not sure I’ll take Cane to Chestnut Ridge next week or not. We might, because I really do love that park, but I love others, too. High are my hopes, though, that I have heard forever the last of the Saxhole of Chestnut Ridge.

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A vignette from the airport

I had to pick my mother up from the airport yesterday. Generally I find that in terms of people-watching, I prefer bus terminals to airports, because at bus terminals you get the crazies. Airports seem to bring out the inner asshole in people, such as the lady who crosses the very wide drop-off lane outside the airport, by herself, and only when she’s on the opposite side does she turn to yell at her five-year-old kid, who has remained on the terminal side of the lane. Yeah. Make sure she’s with you when you cross a street, why don’t you.

And then there’s the small waiting area for arrivals. There used to be more of this seating and it used to be nicely spread out, but in our post-9/11 desire for massive amounts of security, the passenger screening area has taken up pretty much that entire part of the place, with only a pretty small room set aside for people to wait for their arriving loved ones. There were three people in there yesterday, so I took a seat in the back row, away from everyone else. Behind the waiting room is a little cafeteria-restaurant thing, with a seating bar between that and the waiting area. In walks a cluster of three people who decide that they’re going to stand at the seating bar and have their loud and boring conversation, and they’re going to do it right behind me. They could have stood anyplace else and not bothered anyone else, but that wasn’t an option.

So yeah, if you like annoying people, the airport’s the place for you.

But then, there was the Young Woman In Blue Jeans.

She was the only Young Woman there, but she also had on blue jeans. And a nice winter jacket, leather torso with cloth arms and faux-fur on the cuffs and collar. Her long, brown hair fell about her shoulders, and most of all…she looked nervous. No, not nervous. Anxious.

The Young Woman In Blue Jeans could not stand still. She’d check her phone for the time. Then she’d check her phone for the flight status, ignoring what the teevees on the wall had to say about flight status. She’d look around, for no apparent reason because she was clearly there waiting for someone, and she’d rock back and forth from one foot to the other. Then she started this entire cycle again, and finally, she disappeared for a few minutes.

When she reappeared, she set up camp in the exact same spot, waiting for whomever was to come through the exit corridor, and did the same things again: she checked her phone, she rocked back and forth, she spontaneously looked around. Maybe she riffed her fingers through her hair. She tried calmly leaning against the wall, only to give that up seconds later for more foot-rocking.

And when she returned from her brief disappearance, she had a piece of paper in her hand. A full-size sheet, 8 by 11. She’d written something on it, in Sharpie. One of those signs you hold up at the airport to identify yourself to someone. But it didn’t have a name on it; she’d written a lot of words there, and I found myself curious as to what they said. She finally angled toward me just enough that I was able to read her impromptu sign:

LOOKING FOR
the CUTEST BOY
who lives in NEW ORLEANS, LA
to TAKE ME HOME!!!


A lover, I suppose. New lover? Old lover? Lovers meeting for the first time after getting to know each other online?

I never found out. Mom came out of the gate first.

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A sketch

We stood on the balcony of our room while on vacation, looking across the street at the moonlit beach. There were people still about on the Promenade — not many, but it wasn’t deserted, not quite yet. Most of the people who were out were young. Couples in love, or couples who might be in love someday, or couples who weren’t couples but who were just hanging out because they weren’t couples with anybody else yet.

Along came a couple. Definitely a couple. I could tell, despite the fact that they were only in my sight for less than ten seconds. They were riding the same skateboard, him in back, her in front, their hands joined, their bodies leaning in unison. He was tall and lanky, she was tiny — probably the only way a couple could even fit on the same skateboard. But it was dark, and he realized that the skateboard was heading not for a smooth transition from street to sidewalk, but rather, right for a curb. So he slowed, but not slow enough, and stepped back, off the skateboard onto the street. But she didn’t know this was going to happen, so she was still on wheels and moving forward a lot faster.

They never let go, though. She held tight to his hands and he held tight to hers, and as the skateboard surged forward without him on it, she simply allowed herself to lean back, back, ever farther back, until he was supporting her by the hands as she stopped the skateboard but was lying backward at a forty-five degree angle. They hung there, the two of them, having narrowly avoided a crash. She gave out a scream, but it was a scream of delight, the scream of a girl on a thrill ride with a guy she loved, and he laughed, and then she laughed too. Then he kicked the skateboard up onto the sidewalk, they jumped on again, and with two kicks of his left foot, they were off again and out of my sight.

Through that whole thing, they never let go of each other’s hands.

This was four months ago. I hope they’re still holding hands, somewhere.

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A Vignette

It was still pretty chilly that night, but evidently the elderly lady didn’t care: it was April and winter had been officially ‘over’ for three weeks and dammit, she just didn’t care. She was going out with the top down. So out she went, into the garage, to pull the cover off her beloved powder-blue convertible Volkswagen Beetle. Then she suited up in her jogging suit of large, splotchy purple and pink flowers, threw a scarf around her neck, and back the car out of the garage.

It was late afternoon, and the shadows were long. The day was still bright, though, because in this neck of the woods, in mid-April the trees have still not quite begun to leaf out, so those long shadows are narrow and spindly. It’s the time of year when the sun is bright and warm as long as the wind isn’t blowing too hard, and when it’s still quite brisk and cold when you’re in the shade. It’s the time of year when people who own convertibles and motorcycles get them out and endure the chill, just because they want the wind in their hair.

That’s what this lady wanted: the wind in her hair, even though her hair was short and gray and styled to within an inch of its life. She was going out in her convertible, dammit! And that’s just what she did. She backed out of her garage, a bit jerky at first, and then she sat at the very end of her driveway, looking this way and that and this and that and this again, waiting for the perfect moment. Finally, after waiting for a guy out for a walk to scoot past her car (and he looked like he wasn’t entirely sure he trusted her not to gun the gas as soon as he was directly behind her), she backed out into the road, turned, and sped down the road.

She had to feel liberated and free! There’s something especially wondrous in that first taste of spring wind and that first feel or spring sun upon your face. But it’s still…cold. The feeling of freedom is fleeting, replaced quickly by the fact that you’re still freezing.

So she came back five minutes later, parked her beloved Beetle with the top back up, and went back inside to make some tea. Still, summer’s coming.

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A Vignette

She didn’t look elegant at first, with her enormous purse on her shoulder and her white NorthFace fleece jacket. She wore her shoulder-length hair in a tousled style, and her glasses were slightly off-angle. But her lips were rose-red, she had solid control of that purse, and her white jacket was immaculate.

There was a bookcase between where she was standing and where I was working at one of the tables, and she stood there, against that bookcase, looking around the library as if she was supposed to be meeting someone. But there was something nervous about the way she was doing it: she was looking around quickly, right to left to right to left, drumming the fingers of her left hand on the bookcase as she did so. I wondered what she was so nervous about. Was she having a clandestine meeting with an old lover, perhaps? What an odd place to do that – the public library where just several feet away was a guy pounding away on his Macbook, and two old guys sitting by the magazines talking about their respective health troubles.

But as she drummed her fingers on the top of the bookcase, I could see that she wore no ring on any of her fingers.

She decided that she had arrived before her expected party, and opted to sit down. So she came around the bookcase, into the area where the tables were. She had on a skirt of brilliant crimson, the most wonderful red ever. Somehow the skirt matched her lips exactly. She put the purse on the table next to mine and took off the white Northface jacket. The skirt was actually the bottom of a dress, the whole of which was that gorgeous red. The V-neck didn’t plunge too deep, and she wore a necklace of wooden beads that rattled ever so softly – had we been anyplace other than the library, I wouldn’t have heard them. She slung her jacket onto a chair and started unpacking her purse.

The beautiful red dress was also a maternity dress.

She pulled out a purple plastic water bottle, and her keys which hung from a long lanyard. She also pulled out a spiral-bound notebook and an iPad. Her nervousness from before disappeared entirely, which struck me as odd – if she could set that feeling aside so easily, why had she been nervous in the first place? She sat down and went right to work, taking absolutely no notice of anyone around her. She alternated between tapping the touchscreen of her iPad – only using her slender index finger – and jotting notes in her notebook with a number-two pencil. I returned to my writing.

Minutes later, her awaited party showed up. A teenaged girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. The girl plunked her bookbag down on the table. “Hi!” the woman said, looking up and giving the girl a radiant smile.

“Hi,” said the girl. “OMG, you look amazing!”

“Thank you!” said the woman. “How was your break?”

“It was OK. We didn’t go anywhere.”

“Sometimes that’s the best kind of vacation. So, where were we?”

The girl pulled a thick textbook from her bookbag. “The Depression just started.”

“Bummer!” The woman laughed. “All right, let’s get into it. Can you tell me some of the causes of the Depression?”

Ah, I thought. That was it: she was a tutor. There tended to be a lot of them in the after-school hours at the library, and we were now sliding into that time of day. Their conversation delved into the Depression, and my attention returned to my writing. I spared one last look at the pregnant woman in red before I left, though.

Why had she been so nervous at the start?

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A Vignette

This is something I’m going to try doing on a somewhat regular basis, as a bit of writing practice, since I always feel that my descriptions could use some work….

I was working a shit job at the time. A warehouse job. I lasted four days before they showed me the door, but I remember that guy.

Four days, I don’t think That Guy changed his outfit once. White button-down Oxford shirt, tucked into navy blue dress pants (but a cheap brand). White sneakers that matched his shirt. And a navy blue windbreaker that matched his pants. There were two bulges in the windbreaker: his enormous key ring in the outer pocket, and the rectangle of a pack of cigarettes in the inner one.

That Guy was short and potbellied. His hair was white and was the most perfectly-combed hair in history. He had to use some kind of product.

I have no idea what his job was. I only saw him walk around the warehouse, constantly muttering under his breath, in a thick Italian accent. There was one phrase that he used, over and over and over and over again: “Alla that shit”. It was like a mantra for him: “Alla that shit. Alla that shit. Alla that shit.” Once in a while he’d stop and talk to the dude I was working with – never addressing me a single time – and he’d point and say “Move alla that shit”. It was never clear what, exactly, he was pointing to. One time he came back an hour later and said, “Didja move alla that shit?”

Dude I worked with said, “Sure did.”

That Guy looked, grunted with approval, and then waved in some other direction. “Start workin’ on alla that shit.” And then he walked off.

Of course we hadn’t moved a single thing.

Yeah, I remember That Guy.

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