A BRIEF FLASH HITS ME
Something happens when,
for a fleeting moment,
I try to imagine what being someone else is like.
I see their face in a photograph,
their smile at the camera,
the clothes they chose to wear, and a brief flash hits me.
Except, it's not a light.
It usually feels like a soft, cool wind.
When I take this feeling out of context, and remember it in isolation,
I am reminded of my childhood.
Of perfectly warm days in Southern California touring model homes
and huge leveled land where tract-housing neighborhoods were under construction.
But now, with the wind, I see glimpses of the other person,
I feel their inner aesthetic. I guess at their fears, wants, and shortcomings.
And, what's more, a new image appears in my head.
This time of a location I've been to.
In empathizing with one person, I am transported somewhere new.
It's a strange sort of synesthesia --
The emotional with the geographical.
But it is always true.
The wind I feel from my
moment inside someone
is the same feeling I have when I remember
a specific street corner in Paris
or a dirt road in Kerala.
I may not know you any better,
And I most probably am not right,
but my fear of you,
my apprehension of the stranger, has been removed.
And now I am curious.
Curious to know who you are.
Curious what street corners I haven't seen.
Copyright 2014 Oren Peleg
