Together, they sat in the loft of the small coffee shop that overlooked the street, and although they had done it many times before, they had never actually looked at other people as much as they did each other. How ironic that by looking outward on this particular day that they would recognize more of themselves.
The upper loft had a few small tables arranged to either allow people to look down onto the lower floor or out of three large bay windows that opened to the world below but offered enough contrast from the bright sun outside to be nearly invisible unless someone knew to look in the first place or cared enough to do it twice. Today no one cared to do either, but the two of them looked out as they curled as best they could into each other. Even in separate wooden chairs they had always been able to melt themselves together into a single being, retaining dualistic personalities but with its own four arms, encircled itself, like an incarnation of Shiva. No longer concerned with creation or destruction, He simply drops the drum and the flame to hold the other half of his own soul.
Such a simple thing to be able to sit and listen to the sounds of the others voice. Usually his was loud in his own mind yet silent to anyone else . And hers, spoken with the same need to be heard but ignored. To have those two voices felt as much as heard and to convey such meaning to become the dominant and reassuring hum within the center of them both, was nothing short of unnatural. Nothing was ever spoken between the two of them that hadn't been told countless times before, but just as important to say again as to feel. Voices that go so far beyond the usual perfunctory transfer of sound and take on the rare and comforting weight of thoughts made real by how they settled within the others mind; like warm blankets rather than cold wet cloth.
The fears still existed and the battle was still at no end, but when mountains of potential are ground to flat plains of sand and dust, it is a great peace to walk out onto that virtual desert of emotion made by others and be reminded, by one who truly knows better, that mountains, like icebergs of earth and stone, are yet three times as large beneath the surface, and for all their perceived immobility, slowly shift. The pinnacles and outcroppings,crushed smaller and smaller through a multitude of slights and insults to ground down to pebbles and gravel, becoming the grains of sand for an hourglass to which they have no use of nor any desire to account for. Brief moments like these may not seem worth it for others to feel or know, but to them, time slows to a crawl to allow the flash of a smile or the briefest hint of desire to be equal to an entire evening in their arms as only a lover can. When someone asks how long he has loved her, it is with an inward thought to himself that by the mere passing of seconds to reply, he has missed decades with her. Were he to count it all that he had already loved her, it would be the worth of a thousand years.
People below them passed in the street on their way to one place or another and she asked herself if the woman crossing from one side of the street to the other was truly happy. She was certainly no different than any other person , and the same question could have asked of anyone. But this woman just happened to present herself into view as a perfect example. Nothing special about her or nothing unique, nothing beautiful to look at, but neither was she so disagreeable as to cause an undue amount of sympathy or pity. She was a random object that gave voice to a question that no longer wished to hang on the edge of her lips.
"See that woman? You think she is happy? I mean just the way she is? Is she happy?"
The man knew exactly how complex that question was. Not a mere triviality to her to be handed an answer the way a child expects gum to fall from a machine after he sticks in a quarter, but a wholly critical and all encompassing analysis of her life needing to be quantified by the microcosmic entity simply ambulating across a street. The two of them watched her briefly before the man ventured to answer her in the most definitive way he could that would let her know that he had comprehended the gravity of it before he answered.
"Yes"
He thought of the impact of that simple answer and how he felt about the woman he adored so much. Would what he had said be reinforced in her even more by it? He thought of where this woman below in the street was going and what she was doing. Was she going toward a man of her own who thought of her as much as I did for the woman who asked it? Does Shiva exist within the hearts of the usual and the mundane as much as it does in this wonderful woman who held his hand and smoothed her body into his? Didn't everyone deserve that kind of defining love that sets everyone apart from one another by who they adore, yet brings us all together beneath the fact that we all strive for someone to define in ourselves the same thing? As if to answer us both, for all of the things we had asked, but imparted to be decided by transient souls with no more concern for our lives except to pass beneath our gaze, another couple walked across the street.
Two elderly people, their hands holding the others, crossed the street and walked to their car. Her steel gray hair had been dyed and did not seem to notice that her hair did not hold the color as well as the box stated it would. It was combed and curled and appeared she had taken the time to make it look nice for him in a way he appreciated. She tottered carefully on old and weathered legs and shifted her weight slightly from one side to the other as she walked. The man was tall and gray with a bald pate on the top of his head, and his skin was tan but weathered. He walked two steps behind her in a careful and cautious way. Not so much because of a physical weakness of his own as he was a bit stronger than she appeared to be, but in a way of allowing her to choose where she went for herself and he would be happy to be as close as he could to ensure her safety. He followed two steps behind her and let her to be the the one to choose their course without having her see it. It was not because she was in charge of them both that he needed to be two steps subordinate to her. It was a very loving distance that was as enabling to her as it sufficiently allowed him to be protective of her. One was not at the expense of the other, and the intention was not missed by either of us as he followed her down the road. In his other hand, he held her bouquet of flowers.
He was not sure if everything that he had just seen and felt had filtered into the head of the woman he loved so much in quite the same way, but as she stood to go and hugged him close to her, he was reminded of how gracefully she fit into all of the parts of his body. How her arms wrapped around him and held his body against hers in a way that never seemed as though they would lose balance no matter how fiercely they clung to each other. Her hips fitting just inside his and her head nudging the pocket of his shoulder. He was reminded so often of the very first time she held him like this. Of warm summer air and the sound and feel of dry gravel under his feet as she kissed him for the first time after saying that she loved him.
The mountain recognized again, and the sand and dust swept away from the plain to expose the solid rock beneath once more, he reminded her again that she was adored enough to allow her to go so far as she needed to feel she has nothing left of herself to give or love, but that she will never be able to go so far as to have him feel the same thing for her. Time counts again, but not without the realization that for as easy as it is for them to slow and stop what they know so well, it is much easier to have others allow it to rush on by without a second thought.
Shiva's arms unwind from himself. The fire and the drum are held again, and time begins to move. But souls are not unwound. Bound tightly they remain and continue to feed while unwanted sand and dust ticks away on someone else's hourglass. It will take eons to destroy a mountain, and for them, the sand does not stop it. It only covers what moves nonetheless.
