Musings in the park

Back to walking in my park and back to seeing people again.

I walked just before noon last Tuesday and there was only one other person there.  Tall, thin, with brownish gray hair combed over, he wore tanish brown slacks and a short leather jacket. 

Obviously older, he was smoking a cigarette and walking down the center part of the park with a sort of lazy stroll.  He looked familiar, like perhaps a movie star I had seen before, or someone famous enough for me to recognize his face.

As I neared the other side, he emerged and crossed in front of me, heading over to Wesleyan University and I wanted to call out his name, to verify what I was pretty sure of now, but I didn’t.

Instead I stood like the student over at the bus stop, staring.  Both of us watching the man I would stake my life was Sam Shepard!  I went home and looked up the university website trying to see if he was scheduled to be there that day, but found nothing about it.

Yesterday I was walking along, listening to Book III of The Aeneid with visions of Maurice Sendak flowing through my head!  Virgil evoking Sendak!

I saw the Cyclopes, wild things, gnashing teeth, storming down through the woods, rushing down the mountain to crowd the shore and I thought how little we change as we morph from children to adults.  We still want our monsters roaring and dangerous, but vulnerable and stoppable.  An ocean, a religious symbol, some “thing” must be there to protect us from that dark side of ourselves whose presence always lurks within us.

Still, my life is mostly a walk in the park anymore.