She knows I am there

Thursday In Altdorf

They’re all shivering in Switzerland and I am in a midnight room in the City of the Sun. The man with the fresh vegetables and flowers for his wife. The woman with the blue umbrella scurrying past a car trying to find ideal parking. Street markets make people into mute marionettes who have no idea I am watching from half a world away.



Webcams make this possible as I fall in love with a girl who stops for no reason and looks straight back into the camera as if she knows I am there. “Who are you?” she seems to be asking. “I am a thief of this private moment and you cannot have back what I have taken from you.” This is no way to start a romance as anyone who reads scripture knows.

She remains nonetheless and reminds me of an unwary woman I knew who lives not far from where she is standing right now in black pants and a hooded jacket. She moves out into the street and I see she is pushing a bicycle as many Europeans do every day. I liked seeing cyclists in Amsterdam zuzzing all about me when I walked the end of a summer to see dear Vincent.



She moves off now and is gone without so much as a goodbye glance, her shoulders visible just behind the stalls and carts and stands that sell morning cervelat and strong coffee so rich and plentiful on the continent. A man stands hands in pocket, dumbly alone, as we all do when we are easily arrested by the simplicity of deciding where to go, what to do next.

This must be what God does all day long, thousands of cameras trained via millions of monitors, every step traced, every tiny sparrow tagged. The man has not moved and his hands are still pocketed. My lover girl reappears with her bicycle and he watches her pass until she moves out of bottom frame. He looks up at me and mouths something that ends in damn.

Joseph Gallo
April 5, 2007