bird man

There’s something fascinating about a person who simply makes their life where it is and accepts it, just the way it happens.

They're not like the restless, driven, riven, always searching the horizon, curious to know what lies over the hill and sending their minds scouting ahead swarming with possibilities. As I imagine it, these people simply live each lone day, moment by moment. It's not to say they're happier than others, and I don't envy them or yearn to know their secret to life. I'm just interested that such people exist and I wonder how it feels to be without this quick urgency of marrow and veins.

There’s a man in town who works the till in a small convenience store selling cigarettes and cold drinks; sweets, bread and newspapers. It’s the sort of shop where you can buy one cigarette and a box of matches. He keeps a canny Portuguese eye on any kids who linger too long over the chocolate bars. The Sunday papers can be bought on Tuesday or for as long as they remain in an unsold heap beside the entrance - a perk of small town life that’s hard to come by in cities where the weekend's stone cold news is wiped away by Monday morning. When you stop by for some slightly old, and therefore slighty chewy and much improved, marshmallow mice with liquorice tails sold loose from the open box on the counter by the till, he scoops them into a vapour thin plastic bag using bare fingers and tosses in one extra (which you pay for) to make a round number.

We've barely spoken and I haven't asked his name, but I saw his eyes fill with what looks like love when he fed a flock of wild pigeons on the pavement outside his shop one evening, as he does every day.

I heard that someone once ran over a bird and killed it in the street and that the cafe owner wept.