Eyes across crowded room
I have seen no evidence for this phenomenon at any point in my life at all, I say, placing the glass down carefully.
That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, Dave replies, wagging a finger. The trouble with taking a strict phenomenological view is that you are closing yourself off from all the beauty in the world. Stop intuiting. Just see.
Is intuiting a word? I ask
Enough of the beauty in the world. I have spent the afternoon in a retail park in St Helens, fitting air conditioning to a family fun pub. I do not have a high opinion of the beauty in the world. My mouth still tastes of coolant.
Take them, for example he says. He waves the end of his cigar at two points. Point A being next the jukey, where a pale sort in a T-shirt is peering intently at the screen, searching. Point B is a gauzy sort of a girl, hunched towards the corner of a louder and more contemporary group. She’s thin. End of the night, he says. No problem. The cigar tip weaves a figure eight and already I believe him, he’s done it again. Right on cue the lanky kid by the jukey finds a song he was clearly looking for and on it goes. Bombastic guitar fills the air, and his face lights with a sort of ecstasy. She feels it too, she stops her attempts to break into the chatter and looks across.
Great. I say. U2. Just great.
Her eyes catch his. The air feels charged like after a thunderstorm. Just for a second.
And that’s the strange thing, the two are now related. The pattern on his T-shirt is the pattern on her dress, all of a sudden. It wasn’t before. A line has been drawn and each finds an echo in the other. They’ve both turned away, they can’t see each other, it was a moment and it’s gone. But their stances echo each other and suddenly it becomes impossible to see one without seeing the other superimposed. Their images flicker over one another. His t-shirt. Her dress.
I don’t know how you do it, I say.
Neither do I, to be honest, says Dave. Another?
Yeah, alright.
That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, Dave replies, wagging a finger. The trouble with taking a strict phenomenological view is that you are closing yourself off from all the beauty in the world. Stop intuiting. Just see.
Is intuiting a word? I ask
Enough of the beauty in the world. I have spent the afternoon in a retail park in St Helens, fitting air conditioning to a family fun pub. I do not have a high opinion of the beauty in the world. My mouth still tastes of coolant.
Take them, for example he says. He waves the end of his cigar at two points. Point A being next the jukey, where a pale sort in a T-shirt is peering intently at the screen, searching. Point B is a gauzy sort of a girl, hunched towards the corner of a louder and more contemporary group. She’s thin. End of the night, he says. No problem. The cigar tip weaves a figure eight and already I believe him, he’s done it again. Right on cue the lanky kid by the jukey finds a song he was clearly looking for and on it goes. Bombastic guitar fills the air, and his face lights with a sort of ecstasy. She feels it too, she stops her attempts to break into the chatter and looks across.
Great. I say. U2. Just great.
Her eyes catch his. The air feels charged like after a thunderstorm. Just for a second.
And that’s the strange thing, the two are now related. The pattern on his T-shirt is the pattern on her dress, all of a sudden. It wasn’t before. A line has been drawn and each finds an echo in the other. They’ve both turned away, they can’t see each other, it was a moment and it’s gone. But their stances echo each other and suddenly it becomes impossible to see one without seeing the other superimposed. Their images flicker over one another. His t-shirt. Her dress.
I don’t know how you do it, I say.
Neither do I, to be honest, says Dave. Another?
Yeah, alright.
posted by Matt at 2:42 AM
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