elegantwaste's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- opera singing man The day I moved to Vancouver I took a walk in the September sun to the corner grocery for some food. As I turned the corner onto the busy street I saw a man walking towards me, his hands clasped behind him. He wasn't a dirty man but he was scruffy, like someone who didn't care very much about what he looked like but didn't have the means to look good in the first place. He wasn't homeless, but he looked like he probably lived in a tiny, messy apartment that leaked when it rained. None of those things were extraordinary. What was extraordinary was that he was singing. Not quietly to himself, or even at normal volume to himself, and not some pop song he heard on the radio and that was stuck in his head. He was singing in Italian at the top of his lungs a Puccini aria. I stared at him a little, and he smiled as we passed. When I got back home to my new apartment, I told my roommate about him, and we deemed Vancouver a rather strange place. In my head, rather unimaginatively, I call him 'opera singing man'. I see him everywhere. Every day, as far as I can tell, he walks a twenty-block stretch on Broadway street, his hands always behind his back, always singing opera. His voice is suberb. I often see him when my soul feels tight in my body, when there's something raging inside me, when my hands are clasped into fists and my eyebrows furrowed. And when I hear him singing, even if only from afar, if only for a few seconds, something is lifted. Because if he can spend his life walking around singing, I can at least try to spend mine doing the same. Sometimes I see him in the McDonalds or the neigborhood Starbucks having a coffee, sitting by himself. I always want to stop and say hi, and tell him that whenever I see him, whenever I hear him singing, my day becomes a little bit better. So today I did. 5:27 p.m. - 2003-05-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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