A true story. I watched the jet cut through the sky that afternoon, crossing the roof of a nearby building before disappearing out of sight. “You see that?” came a voice from behind. I turned to see the shadowy gait of an elderly man topped with a baseball cap clutching onto a black chihuahua tethered to a leash held behind his back. The sky was a warm colour without a single cloud but the man didn’t seem to notice. He was lost in thought. In a situation such as this, the trick was to avoid being caught in a conversation there was no escape from. But the trick became a joke, and the joke was on me. All I could do was listen to him describe a less apparent view picked apart in ways that made sense to him and him alone. He cut through everything along with the moment, pointing at the distant dot and passenger jet, he smiled, which was also hard at work. We were witnesses, he beamed, to the latest display of geo-engineering, planes irradiating the sky to infiltrate the food chain. My what and how fell on deaf ears, as he gave the impression that he simply knew the reason why. It wasn’t a passenger plane either. Just another drone owned by some faceless corporation. By this point it was clear he had been given too much leeway. In that split second his slight frame and the long shadow it cast had the listless impression of Lee Friedlander, at first standing behind me before traveling without moving to speak leaving me behind, gesturing at the sky with his back to me the whole time. He said he grew up in Oregon, which he explained experienced a tsunami of its own hundred of years ago. Despite being the American midwest, the coast was close enough for Oregon to bear the marks of inland wash from the Cascadia earthquake of 1700. The event was so great it changed the geology of East Coast America, transcribing it in woodland tree rings to encapsulate the tale of this trauma which others would later decode. His voice compressed history into matters of fact when the Danish Embassy across the street caught his eye. The green flag waving above was just about visible from where we stood but could be clearly heard cracking in the breeze. I barely spoke yet he assumed I was British, adding how Denmark recognized the Prince of Wales as Denmark’s true benefactor and a real Green Prince while the Prince’s Royal charity had effectively destroyed New Zealand farmland on the other side of the world. Margaret Thatcher didn’t escape his thoughts along with the Pan-European group of decision makers she frequently met secretly in Rome. “Shame about her dementia though,” he added balancing out her misdeeds. Had the Club of Rome driven her mad. Had the climate and all the talk of deities and divinity come back to haunt her and possibly the future King of England too? By now the sun dropped out of sight and a small child had entangled itself around table legs and under chairs chasing the chihuahua while the child’s mother wrestled child, dog and furniture, frantically apologising over and over again. Waiting for the right moment to make a move, I said the first thing that came to mind. “I must go”, words with a mind of their own. He was crestfallen and held out his hand in disappointment. I looked at the small exhausted dog then looked up to say goodbye but he’d gone. I remember with every anecdote came an apologetic smile and there was something distant about how he avoided eye contact and never looked at his dog. The last thing I remember before he suddenly vanished was his name: “I’m Lee”, he said.
First published as a part of “Snetha-noir” by Snetha Residency in 2013.