Bubbles

Such thoughts I have tonight of my dear unwritten character, who stood waiting on the wrong end of the horizon for twenty minutes reading some assignment or another, eventually getting on the wrong train, a train, that took her to her destination, nonetheless.

The Queens bound R train and a shriveled little brown man with cracked hands and yellow fingernails appears in her standing space and wonders if anyone will forfeit his seat, when a woman pulls her child up and offers the gift. Guilty eyes averting, suspicion ensuing all around—and a child nearby, smiling, takes out his tiny yellow canister—smooth plastic, colorful writing en espanol-- filled to the brim with soapy liquid and a magic wand and he begins to blow thin, meek little bubbles—innocent, forgetful, unsuspecting. Nearby, the little brown man opens his mouth, catches, and swallows the bubbles, unaware and unabashed.

A reader lost in thought begins worrying about the man’s intentions. A gamer attempts to contract the attention of the magic bubbler’s mother. A student is complacent, ignoring, ignorant, self-denying, and self-fulfilling all at once because it is what comes natural in the afternoon of life. The hero child who has learned to forfeit his seat pouts sadly in his mother’s lap. My dear unwritten character acknowledges all of them, including the fresh-faced, stiff suited flirty smiler toying with some electronic device or another.

The magic bubbler child is delighted. This man is perfect! He catches every bubble in his mouth. He is smiling back. He smiles all around him, in the dark, ignorant of worry, attention, complacency, sadness, and flirty smiles—ignorant of his own ignorance! And when mommy hisses at the magic bubbler, and the magic bubble yellow plastic canister is snatched away, daddy starts glaring— and the reader, the gamer, the student, the hero child, and the flirt are satisfied. And my dear unwritten character, along with the magic bubbler, as well as the brown man, coexist in a fragile, flimsy, frail little world that is, without a doubt, poppable- breakable and brittle. We are floating in space, unable to control the air currents. We are unwilling to be a part of the other, yet we misjudge, because the horizon is the horizon.. We flout on what everyone else sees as infringements, fearing nothing until there is something unforeseeable to be feared… disillusioned by the set of laws we blindly follow, led to nowhere by nothing we can touch or hold…incapable of being held for too long as our own transparency allows others to see right through us.

Fragile, flimsy, frail, poppable, transparent, breakable, brittle little bubbles floating along the horizon… We are.