I cannot help reading with curious, wandering eyes. I would be more efficient at home, but I do not pick up a book just to have it done. Reading is an experience, each book, something better shared with others, though they probably have little knowledge of the interaction. Do I?
Yes. I know what I do. I am introspective. I see deep currents under my life as it is lived. Perhaps others do not think about themselves, think about life, in the way I do. Probably they do. But maybe not.
Steinbeck did. Nothing seems to have evaded his contemplative creativity and unrelenting veracity.
These girls do not know that they just entered my life. Girls? Women? Who is to say which is which and what defines which and when this or that line is crossed?
Steinbeck did. The crossing of a steep canyon was a right of passage, stepping across a threshold. Womanhood attained only after marriage. At 17. 18? I did not read closely enough. Maybe 19.
These women are 16 and unmarried. Both are guesses. Unmarried is an easy guess. 16 is harder. I have lost track of years, of what a year is. Events in my life could probably be put on a calendar if someone had a mind to. But I cannot see them that way. My whole past crowds and pushes right behind every passing second. There is no order. Not a single memory is politely in its proper place. They all long to be now. These girls are probably 16. Not younger than 15, right? No older than 18. College kids keep getting younger, but not this young. Probably.
My ears are entertained with music that is meant to be played live. Show-goers get lost in the rhythm and repetition and relaxation. I am graced with a digital readout over bluetooth. Not great, but good, and hypnotic in its own limited way. Over-the-ear headphones are hardly the kind of immersion in one’s surroundings as Steinbeck described. But it can do, I suppose. I do not have access to bird’s chirps and wind’s hush and earth’s hum in a coffee shop. Headphones will have to do.
Whatever. I am losing track of the point.
These girls… no.
These women are no more than six feet in front of me. But they are in a different world. Six feet, a pair of headphones, and a book is enough to separate universes. I am somewhere else. I am not where they are. But I can peek up once in a while. I have curious eyes, after all. This we know.
They are still too young to have any real appeal. But beauty is budding, and there is a wholesomeness in the transition. There is no actual attraction, but womanhood whispers from a year or a few in the future. They are not who they are. They are who they are becoming, and who they are becoming are beautiful women. But not yet.
Does she have hispanic blood? Her bright top and shallow-heeled sandals belie a life full of lively latin dancing and a lively latin family. Probably.
Is her mother a writer? Her dull top and Birkenstocks belie a life of quiet study and studious conversations. More probably.
The girls in them are friends. Classmates find bonds where there is just emptiness between. The girls can be friends though the women cannot. Can they? Please? They should remain friends. That would be more wholesome still.
I cannot hear a single word of their conversation. The jam band drowns them out. I do not know what they are saying. But Steinbeck told me that it is something profound. Of course, their words are not profound. Those are probably as simple as a farmer rubbing dirt between his hands. But Steinbeck told me that is something profound. This conversation is more than it is. Surely.
I have seen the conversations of sorority girls. It is like their every expression has been exported from California. Not Steinbeck’s valleys. Modern day LA. They are too vapid to have their own expressions. Not these two.
Of course, the expressions are not their own. They are simply practicing what they have seen their mothers do. I have never seen their mothers, but it is not so hard to imagine.
But no. The expressions are their own. They are old enough to have adopted each look into their own repertoire. Each blink or flutter of blinks. The way they smile or just hold their mouth. A crossing of the legs. That is theirs, not their mothers’. They must be at least 16. Old enough for things of their own.
These girls are women. I do not care what modern society says. They are grown. I suppose they have more growing to do, yes. And of course a man like me has no business with them, not that I would want any such business. But they are grown women. At least that is what Steinbeck would say. Steinbeck would give them thoughts and words that are brimming with mother earthly wisdom regardless of what they thought or said. Steinbeck knows the world is full of profundity. Steinbeck knows nothing about Instagram.