Moment

He sits there at night, in the lot, with his back to the table on which his elbows rest, slouched in the manner of a wire once taut. It is one o'clock, A.M., a silent warm night. Only the light breeze can be felt. The lights in the lot are on, keeping the darkness away from the cars parked there as the man sits.

His eyes are off in the distance. He is, likely, contemplating something that is not that object in the distance, at least not literally. If you stand in obstruction of his view, you would not be obstructing his view, for he is not seeing anything in particular but that subject which reigns in his mind. He is a man in thought.

As you walk up to him, a car passes into the lot, at first close, then farther and farther. Distance is nothing, but closeness is everything. You are close to him; surely he knows this. When you pass within a few paces of him, he turns and catches your eye, but says nothing. He is not to be disturbed.

You wonder what could drive him to sit there, thinking, deliberating, perhaps simply waiting. Is he troubled? Is he at peace? What causes a man to enter this state of ambiguity which only he knows and that you do not know? And yet you do know simply by walking by him. Right then, you are him, and he is you. When he catches your eye, the essence of that moment is transferred through the ether from soul to soul, a movement that is faster than instantaneous, a singular copying of mind and being that is closer than juxtaposition. He sees you, sees the physical representation of a human who stands before him, and yet also sees your very existence deep into the roots of the universe.

The moment is broken. He is still there, surely, but this is not important. A man can sit in one place, forever, yet the duration is lost as quickly as a grain of sand into a dune. There are but moments, each shorter than time itself, which build upon each other unto infinity, allowing you that locking of gaze that transcends comprehension. Each of those moments is a different moment, unrepeatable, lost forever immediately, yet destined to be echoed in each moment thereafter.

This is not to say that the man either does not value each moment or values each moment excessively. He has seen what is present there, and it is not lost, but saved.