Yesterday at the library.
This is what I wrote, when I saw what I saw:
Ok. Sitting in one of the reading rooms of the Carnegie Library. A tall, bespectacled and skinny guy asks if a seat is taken. Which is funny because you just don't ask that. He's ready for the beach. Light blue palm tree design shirt. Hawaiian fare. Off white khaki cargo shorts. Flip-flops, of course. Hair cut of an aspiring senator, albeit a little unruly. Nothing a little "Wild Root"* couldn't fix.
He sits down with his laptop. I continue reading Moby Dick. I don't think of him again until I hear a faint and familiar melody [coming from his headphones.] "Hey...Hey, baby. I want to know, will you be my girl..." [That repeats] And he's smiling, scrolling, typing, looking off to the right every so often for inspiration [among the travel books]. I notice to his right on the arm of the leather chair he has an arts and crafts type black and white picture of a blond. The picture is in the bottom left, to the right and above it are some words on [sea] green paper. The 'frame', if that's what it is, resembles cardboard but is the color of his cargo shorts. Sitting on his seat[, also] to his right, on the space he is not taking up - remember, I said he was skinny - is another makeshift frame. This one [I know] is cardboard because I can see the crease, where the box he cut it from once folded. The top, which I can barely make out, reads 'Mandy' in grey blocked letters.
But, even after writing all of this, I don't, for some reason, find it sad or funny. There's just something nice about it to me. At least right now.
Right now, I think it's funny.
*About Wild Root, one of the ingredients is Formaldehyde.
Ok. Sitting in one of the reading rooms of the Carnegie Library. A tall, bespectacled and skinny guy asks if a seat is taken. Which is funny because you just don't ask that. He's ready for the beach. Light blue palm tree design shirt. Hawaiian fare. Off white khaki cargo shorts. Flip-flops, of course. Hair cut of an aspiring senator, albeit a little unruly. Nothing a little "Wild Root"* couldn't fix.
He sits down with his laptop. I continue reading Moby Dick. I don't think of him again until I hear a faint and familiar melody [coming from his headphones.] "Hey...Hey, baby. I want to know, will you be my girl..." [That repeats] And he's smiling, scrolling, typing, looking off to the right every so often for inspiration [among the travel books]. I notice to his right on the arm of the leather chair he has an arts and crafts type black and white picture of a blond. The picture is in the bottom left, to the right and above it are some words on [sea] green paper. The 'frame', if that's what it is, resembles cardboard but is the color of his cargo shorts. Sitting on his seat[, also] to his right, on the space he is not taking up - remember, I said he was skinny - is another makeshift frame. This one [I know] is cardboard because I can see the crease, where the box he cut it from once folded. The top, which I can barely make out, reads 'Mandy' in grey blocked letters.
But, even after writing all of this, I don't, for some reason, find it sad or funny. There's just something nice about it to me. At least right now.
Right now, I think it's funny.
*About Wild Root, one of the ingredients is Formaldehyde.
posted by Rosemeyer at 5:36 PM
