A Brief Flash Hits Me

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