You can usually distil the essence of tragedy from a single detail notable only for its banality.
I witnessed a young twentysomething guy get hit by a bus as he was coming out of the supermarket with his groceries this morning - his injuries were not, thankfully, life-threatening yet naturally it was still shocking to see. But it was the sight of his scattered shopping lying ignored in the road, in the bright February sunshine, as the ambulance prepared to scream off, that got to me. The energy drink, the pizza, the pasta sauce, the bananas, the milk, the till receipt.
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One of the saddest things I ever saw? Two years ago I worked on Christmas Eve. We closed up at 6, and by 6:30 we were free to go. On the way back home I drove by a Christmas tree lot that had closed for the day. And the lot was almost totally empty except for one tree. And the sight of that one tree all alone in the middle of that parking lot really broke my heart. Like, every other tree had been selected to go to a home for Christmas except that one. I don't know, I tend to assign personalities and human emotions to inanimate objects quite often. Which is why I've always found children's attachments to stuffed animals to be very moving, as I believe I mentioned in the first "Heart of Glass" entry.
For some reason, a lot of children's books have a tendency to get me all choked up too. Especially ones that involve cats. Yet so much human suffering barely registers on me.
thanks for sharing that story, sypha_69, I can feel that too just from your narration
Just think of how lucky that little tree is. Where as all it mate was taken into homes, dressed up and marvelled at just to thrown away a few days later, that little tree was made into paper used for beautifull loveletters, a novel that changed the life of someone lonely and the cover of a Whitehouse album.
in the case of the accident, i think what you were responding to was something that was very recognisably human... as well as the realisation that such things can happen at any time, out of the blue, while we are engaged in the most mundane and seemingly meaningless kinds of activities...
In a way, this makes me think of those lost children's toys, gloves, hats or whatever that are then carefully placed by those that find them on a wall so they can hopefully be found again easily, only for them to remain there for days or weeks on end...
A bag of fresh strawberries on bus floor, still in ziplock bag.
The birds around here are scavengers-no cockies having their brekkie, eyeing me placidly ( we have a good thing going, me and those cockies. i think it was my singing to them ) as i walk down the green belt, like my last place sadly.
they all want meat!:P
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