If There Is Life On Other Planets
Going Through Old Notebooks Part 35: "We roll around this star, made entirely of drive and sunlight and sugar. The whole thing, this mirage that is our existence—what is it for?"
Yesterday on the rainy market street I bought a bouquet of lilacs wrapped in packing tape. The flower seller spoke neither French nor English. In a cardboard box at his feet he had the bouquets arranged with no water; daffodils in various hues, and the lilacs. They are the kind of lilacs one might steal from a public park or a roadside, which is surely where these came from.
Almost every day I see them, these young men, selling their stolen flowers. The bug-eaten petals that probably looked better under cover of darkness. Good or bad, I encourage this enterprise with my crumpled five euro notes.
I can see them there, in the spring night, the river of headlights and taillights flashing white and red over them as they gather the goods in the rain. This city and its suburbs coming into flower, awash in a language they don’t know.
