Over the Busted Curvature of the Earth

Piet Mondrian, "Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue"  (1921)The day I spent today was arranged to take me from doctor to doctor, maybe as an attempt to stay alive, maybe as an action designed to give the appearance of same.

So I drove. I drove the day away. At once point I took a sharp curving hook of an offramp of the road we call Crosstown in Schenectady, which became an onramp onto I-890.

I've rounded that curve thousands of times before. Sometimes, turkeys have flown in front of the car as I did so. Sometimes, I passed turkeys walking through the narrow strip of grass. Sometimes, I'd come across a stopped car or something in the road. But today I passed something I've never seen before.

On the outside ramp of this road, a guardrail protects our cars from skidding off into the shallow woods, and today I saw a young woman walking on that guardrail. As I turned the car to the right in a circle and clockwise, I swiveled my head to the left and counter-clockwise to look at her, almost over my shoulder. As I did, she looked at me as I looked at her.

She was calm, very calm. And deliberate. She moved her feet, one in front of the other, with the grace and composure of an athlete on a balancing bar. And she was certainly balancing. Her feet pointed slightly forward as she made each step.

Her calmness wasn't calming at all. She seemed calm enough to kill herself. She seemed calmed beyond the sadness her life may have borne down upon her.

And she walked along the top of that curving guardrail as if she were going somewhere, and the rail (I noted) would end in just one more step.

After entering I-890, I stopped the car at the side of the road and made a call to 911, talking to two separate dispatchers. I described the situation, noted how dangerous this act was, and the second dispatcher I spoke to said she would send someone out to investigate.

My biggest surprise was that they asked me what she was wearing, and I actually remembered. Normally, I have no idea what anyone has worn, but this time I had subconsciously thought the woman important enough to remember what she was wearing: a white skirt, a red blouse, and a black sweater. I told the dispatchers that, and told them that she had long and straight medium brown hair.

I did not tell them that she was beautiful, in that simple way that young women usually are, when they are radiant and do not see how beautiful they are. When their skin is unblemished and shines of color. I did not tell them that she walked with grace, as if trained as a ballerina. I did not tell them that when she walked she strode engulfed by her own beauty, that she couldn't repress it, that she seemed calm enough to want to kill herself.

I did not tell them that I wanted to save her from death, that I questioned whether I should stop the car to make the call, that I wanted this woman, whom I'd seen for no more than five seconds, to live.

I did not tell them that I thought I remembered what she was wearing because Piet Mondrian taught me how to remember her.

I told them my name. I spelled my last name. I didn't ask them to tell me if they found her. I didn't ask for any story.

I no longer remember if she is real at all.

I do not know how many of us walk, each day, with such grace, over the curvature of the earth.

ecr. l'inf.