Downtown
I saw four interesting things on my walk home this afternoon. I am still thinking about what I saw downtown.
First, the driver of a SUV yelling at a cyclist, who was so incensed that he had let his bicycle drop onto the sidewalk, broken off a chunk of icy windrow and hurled it across two lanes of car tops and toward the sealed SUV driver. The icy meteorite of rage gently landed short of its target, in a puff of white.
That was on 102 Ave. near 103 St. I walked on.
A half block later, a pickup driver shot the motorist in the next lane the finger.
Seconds later, at 104 St, a pedestrian running for the bus received the driver's signal to meet him a block ahead at the marked stop. The running woman exhaled a twist of water vapour and stepped into the intersection and slipped and then lost her balance and fell onto the street with enough violence that the purse and satchel she was carrying landed on top of her helpless body. She heaved herself up and said she was okay, twice, and ran again after the bus, her bags dancing twisted behind.
I was still replaying these scenes as I arrived under the giant clock at MacEwan University. The rush hour light was weakening. I was not the first to see a wounded pigeon wobbling across a square of sidewalk. From a lamp post, a blackness opened its wings and dropped down and did its killing work. I watched, as did two other pedestrians.
And then we each turned away and walked into the wind that blew.
First, the driver of a SUV yelling at a cyclist, who was so incensed that he had let his bicycle drop onto the sidewalk, broken off a chunk of icy windrow and hurled it across two lanes of car tops and toward the sealed SUV driver. The icy meteorite of rage gently landed short of its target, in a puff of white.
That was on 102 Ave. near 103 St. I walked on.
A half block later, a pickup driver shot the motorist in the next lane the finger.
Seconds later, at 104 St, a pedestrian running for the bus received the driver's signal to meet him a block ahead at the marked stop. The running woman exhaled a twist of water vapour and stepped into the intersection and slipped and then lost her balance and fell onto the street with enough violence that the purse and satchel she was carrying landed on top of her helpless body. She heaved herself up and said she was okay, twice, and ran again after the bus, her bags dancing twisted behind.
I was still replaying these scenes as I arrived under the giant clock at MacEwan University. The rush hour light was weakening. I was not the first to see a wounded pigeon wobbling across a square of sidewalk. From a lamp post, a blackness opened its wings and dropped down and did its killing work. I watched, as did two other pedestrians.
And then we each turned away and walked into the wind that blew.
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