Regretful Limitations

5:30am walk through semi-conscious city streets. The air hangs heavy with the dreams of those still comfortably tucked in bed. The movement of the few up and present are dulled, unhurried, almost as if in respect for the slumbering, unencumbered souls lying tranquilly in the high-rises above. I step off the curb, begin to cross the empty street. Eyes grazing a sky that wrestles between the dark and the coming light. Head turned toward traffic that isn’t there. Cautious, anticipatory reaction. So ingrained it is. I revel in the freedom to amble slowly. For a moment I am tempted to dance across it; grand sweeping gestures with my arms, light footed leaps ending in languid revolutions. But like so many of my whims, it is smothered. Sequestered inside a room brimming with ignored indulgences. Instead I put one foot in front of the other in the most basic of ways. My advance mirroring the feel of all around me while quietly mourning the loss of my Ginger Rogers moment. What I see next keeps my attention keenly focused. A lone figure standing in the very center of the street. He is in uniform; long coat tails, white gloves, and a distinguishable hat on his head. His legs are spread, his arms outstretched as he beckons. He is a doorman from the neighboring high-rise, hailing a car that has not yet reached him. I see the approaching lights of the oncoming traffic. Coming, coming, but not yet here. That precise bilateral light soaks up the gaps in his stance. Splintering shards of illumination that not only cast him in shadow but that set him aglow simultaneously. The visual effect of this familiar image slows my already slow pace, nearly stalls it completely. Filling me with an ache for the camera that is nothing but empty space within my longing hands. Because this image is not exactly familiar. Not in this way. Not against the backdrop of this indecisive sky. Not on the rare solitude of these streets. In my eyes, in my mind, he is no longer a doorman beckoning a cab. He is the human void of outside influence, void of ever present responsibility. He stands firmly in a most inherent, organic state. Beckoning light, freedom, experience, the lush beauty of life. And decked to the nines for his date with it. The stiffness of his limbs rebelling against the rough rush and tumble of a world spinning him this way and that. He commands not the oncoming traffic to halt in his presence but the world. So that perhaps he might turn and with a tip of his hat and a gloved hand extended…..ask the lone female meandering across...to dance.

My words. They are a meager substitution for the visual he lent. My apologies. Were I lucky enough to have had the means to photograph him or the ability to draw him, to paint him……well, then you’d see. You’d see what I saw. I cannot share this image in its most purest form. And for this I am regretful.