Window, Ocean, Song — How Mortality Arrived The Other Day

I don’t know if you’ll be with your husband and son at a pool hall, working on your cartoons while the other two play eight-ball, when the texts and calls come in to say your father-in-law has died on the other side of the country — but I was. I often accompany my two pool fans to their multi-hour activity so that I can be near them while I draw, instead of at home in the much-too-quiet. The other day was no different. When we got there, the pool players set up shop while I went to the windows along the back wall. We had the entire pool hall — with music and wait staff scrolling their phones — all to ourselves. I sat down on a stool in front of the windows and peered out. I was three stories high, looking out onto a self-contained chunk of the world. Below me was a big parking lot that served a retail plenitude. There was a grocery store, Starbucks, restaurants, and rows and nooks of shops — furniture, pet, liquor, barber, and second-hand. Beyond that, comprising the horizon, were high-rise commercial and residential buildings. I live in a federal contractor haven — lots of big companies with big offices, and the accompanying apartments that lend a housing hand. I looked down and spied. A young girl in a pink tulle skirt followed her mother into the grocery store — the mother’s eyes pinned forward; the child’s eyes pinned to the man sitting atop a milk crate asking for money. In the center of the lot, a middle-aged, muscular fellow stood on his only leg and hoisted his wheelchair up into the back of his jeep, then hopped to the driver’s door, opened it, tilted in, and drove away. This was the moment I learned you can drive with one leg. There are endless things to know. <a href="https://medium.com/age-of-empathy/window-ocean-song-how-mortality-arrived-the-other-day-c0becc1e6971">Read More</a>