indulge me

I was moving in a slight daze and could feel the sun baking my skin, but it felt distant, as if someone was describing the sensation of heat to me rather than my feeling it, and I looked to my left as two skateboarding teens twisted and turned past bicyclists moving in the opposite direction, the boys moving with as much speed as they could muster and quickly disappearing to the fading sound of the skateboard wheels grinding on the pavement where I slowly turned my head forward and continued walking as I was intensely aware of my surroundings with birds singing overhead – with whistles, chirps, and cawls -  children passing on their bikes laughing and yelling for their parents as a young couple approached, hand-in-hand, her wearing short shorts and he wearing torn jeans and a Ramones T-Shirt, the aromas swirling around my head a mixture of their colognes – hers light and pretty, his solid and silky – and then quickly dissipating into the hot air as I passed a hotel on Paseo de Montejo and noticed the landscaping:  A wagon wheel propped among the shrubs and flowers, attempting to evoke an earlier era and, I suppose, soften the hard, cold contours of the 9-story marble-facade building with its ridge of dirt separating grass and sidewalk bricks, for what purpose I do not know and as I moved forward I wanted to close my eyes and allow my senses to lead me, but there were too many obstacles in my path and I didn’t want to take the chance I might disturb the dream-like state because I was doing my best to simply be in the moment and allow my senses to be vividly alive and I felt the blood coursing through my body, especially down my hands and fingers; my feet stopped aching and I glided along the sidewalk with so many sounds bombarding my ears at once that I could barely categorize them all: Along with the birds overhead and the families enjoying their Sunday morning to my left I could hear car engines to my right on the next street over, one being an older car, most likely a Ford, with its tell-tale water pump making that familiar click-click-click and all the walkers’ shoes made various sounds on the large red bricks under our feet - clop, clop, sshump, sshump, ping, ping, ping, ping, and I thought to myself that I must remember these sounds, these smells, these sights;  I must remember this feeling of being alive in this moment; my temples relaxed and I stopped grinding my teeth; I let go of my stomach muscles and the weight shifted forward as I met a tag of taxi drivers gathered around their vehicles parked along the side street, some of them idling, their exhausts spewing the venomous, piercing odor and threatening to catapult me back to reality as the men laughed, tugged on their crotches, and added to the acrid odor of car fumes were the waftings of burnt tobacco as the men sucked on cigarettes and I quickly wound my way between them to cross the street where ahead were numerous artists selling their paintings and as I strolled past their wares I tried not to judge their works, but only to allow them to have whatever effect they may have, feeling little in the way of inspiration or emotion, but very much feeling the weight of the artists’ labored stares desperately seeking my approval, and my money, and I felt uncomfortable and sad for them, not being able to imagine making my way through the world working on the streets and how lucky I am in my life to be able to indulge myself in this manner – to know I have some security – a thriving business – a future, when just ahead a woman stooped over to pick up her dog’s dropping as she expertly wrapped a small plastic bag around her hand, grabbed the entire mess, and almost magically turned the bag outside in as she arose and crossed to the trash can on the street as she’d done many times before and I came to the glorieta with the OXXO store, the area eerily quiet – as opposed to the clamor normally occurring here with traffic coming from all directions, fighting their way through the traffic circle - when I noticed the sun’s rays hitting the trees above and shattering into a million fragments, each falling to their place in line along the sidewalk and street and buildings as I walked under the trees and my skin stopped baking and the air momentarily cooled as a man sat on a bench awaiting a bus that would not come this morning and just beyond a couple of old mansions to my right were in the process of restoration as others sat and continued their slow, abandoned decline; one of the restorations only the façade of the old home remaining intact while a new, modern facility arose behind it, with the sidewalk rising and falling due to tree roots and heavy rains inundating the walk to the heavy iron fence to my right which protected the cars in the lot of the small shopping area from Paseo where a guard sat in a shack at the parking lot’s entrance, his small portable TV blaring some sporting event as I slowly began to return to the present and my final glorieta that would require all my focus to cross the dangerous intersection until I was pleasantly reminded that it was Sunday and there was very little traffic about so I quickly and easily crossed the street to the grass median and immediately continued on to step up on the far sidewalk and its carpet of bird doo that told me I had reached my destination and in that instant pulled myself back to reality as I looked up to see the patinaed stone front of my friendly neighborhood Walmart