Boston (dos)

Though much has transpired since yesterday, I feel compelled to tell a seemingly irrelevant story instead. I reserve the right to write fiction.

It is too easy to wonder while walking in warm sun, cool breeze. It is too easy to wander as you wonder. My wanderment brought me to Boston Commons park, which is a popular place on a day as wonderful as this. Images so cross legged, hair blown, and smile wide. I find myself needing more, something unexpected, and in this state of searching you commonly find it. As my mind crawled up the texture of a nearby wall, a man's voice made it snap back to me on a lightning spring.
"Any change for the homeless sir?" the man said.
Head shaking side to side, puzzled face I reply, "I have nothing for ya today man."
I look him in the eyes to try to feed him my seriousness and sympathy.
"Thanks anyways," he says and I continued past.
This scene has been all too common on my travels, so my mind replays the encounter almost instantly. On many similar occasions I have told a fib as a means of escape. Saying "I don't have any money", when I do. Upon personal reflection it is always an embarrassing and disappointing reaction, and today I reflected just like the others.
~Forty feet in front of me, a man in a wheelchair is holding his arms extended high. It appears to be a motorized wheel chair with accessory bags on the sides and rear, full of items. The bags exude adventure and turmoil, but not as much as the man's sun hat, and not near as much as the man's face. I am close enough now to see he has in his hands a fishing pole pointed up and in front of him. My first thought is that this man has a line hooked to the top of a park light post directly in front of him and he is pulling himself toward it. I imagine him getting around the city this way, with his hook in the crack of a building wall, with his hook in a pedestrian's back jean pocket. My eyes re-focus and see that there is in fact a fishing line going past the light post, right over my head. The man, aged skin and frail body, wears a confusing smile. Confusing, as I cannot tell if it is truly a smile of deep joy or the crooked smile that is formed from degraded facial muscles after a stroke. I am now right up to the man, and I am turning back 'round to see what it is that he is fishing for.
The thin white line stretches out through the blue sky and into the branches of the winter bare tree at ~fifty feet, but I know there must be more. I am talking to the man with a small portion of my functional brain, and searching the scene with the rest.
"What is going on here man?"
He may have answered, but I wasn't paying attention, because I had found it. ~Four hundred feet to the east, ~two hundred feet off of the Earth, a colorful kite is whipping in wild winds. It must be well beyond the edge of the park and over portions of downtown Boston. It appears that it needs to fly only ~ten more feet to land on a ~ninth floor balcony of the high rise condominium building across the street. At the site, a rush of warmth generated at my core and spread outward toward the underside of my skin. Barely bigger than a speck of red, yellow, and blue dipped then rose upward. A desperate dive and several simultaneous somersaults, with a tail of ~three ribbons following right behind. I realized I was laughing wholeheartedly, and I turned to find the man passing the fishing pole to me.
"hold...hold" he says with difficulty.
I grabbed the pole. A sudden recognition of duty came over me and I manned my mission. I said something to the man, but I cannot remember what. The line appears to be tangled in the branches of the nearby tree, but it is difficult to be certain. Regardless, she is flying strong.
"Do you ever lose her and half to go chase it down over there in downtown?" I ask.
The man gurgles a response that I do not comprehend. He is still locked on the flier with deep intent, and in this moment I saw the reason for my confusion regarding the man's smile. Thanking him multiple times, I handed the rod back to the stroke suffered man. Broken lips revealing crowned teeth, and a royal blue smile beaming from his eyes.

From Boston 10