Each of us operate with a unique, personal frequency. As we navigate through our collective reality, we encounter countless frequencies of others. Sometimes the resulting exchange is consonant, nurturing harmonies that enrich the psyche and surrounding air. At other times, a great dissonance is created, causing a flux that weighs heavy, compromising the anima. 

These are mere imprints of observations and fellow travelers i've encountered, as i navigate a path without specific destination. 

Frequencies 01: coffee house

I’m sitting in Starbucks trying to edit some past words that have been too long neglected. I notice an older gentleman, maybe 70 or so, walking with an even older woman, probably his mother. Very slowly, attentively, he helps her step up and into the doorway and through the entrance. Their clothed in years-worn, but still modestly elegant attire. The greying of his collar and cuffs and the frayed thread fingers grasping the edge of her coat tell a tale of temperate life.

He slowly walks towards my single table. In an apparent, but not overly heavy accent he asks if she can sit in the chair across the table. “Of course.” I say, to which he gently guides her down into the tufted maroon chair with large, padded armrests. He Lifts her legs so that she may sit back, but immediately transforms her already diminutive appearance into that of a small child slowly swinging her legs as if eagerly awaiting the after meal sweet course. I offer him my seat but he pleasantly refuses and immediately grabs a wooden chair from across the room. He places his cracked, weathered leather satchel upon the chair, and gives her a gentle kiss on her forehead before walking toward the counter to make a purchase.

The music in the coffeehouse is soft, but audible. After a few moments the woman, frail and with an expression of far away remembrance, begins to gently sing with the music playing. “La, laaa, la…” she carols, gentle but definite. Her eyes suddenly filled with twinkles marking a possible return to a happier destination of long ago and far away, maybe to when she ran fast and freeing as a child. Maybe she returned to the song that filled the air around her during that first kiss or sang out on a wedding's first dance. Wherever she was, it was a wonderful place and she was lost in it, completely. Petals, birthed and wet, scale and perch on the ledges of my eyes. And with the sudden attendance of shallow, labored breath, I remember how much I miss my grandmother all over again. With her face settled, the hands of the elderly woman begin to slowly dance in air, ever so slowly and without apprehension or remark.

The man returns and the exchange is of two people, solemn and content. She continues to sing softly intermittently between his words. He has one cup of coffee and two cups. He pours a bit from the medium sized cup into her very small cup, fitting in her withered palms just perfectly... and adorably. At one point he puts his hands around hers and they sit alone and travel far from me, far from the table, the music, far from the coffeeshop and passing bus squeals. They sit in pieta for one brief moment, emitting vibrations of stilling frequency. Both are quiet and motionless yet so brightly alive like the waking stretch of early morning canyon mist or that of Matisse flowers looking back at us through its canvased window pane. Beautiful.

They return to the life at present, finish their shared coffee and the man gathers himself and readies the woman. He stands and helps her to her feet, gently placing one foot down with a pat upon the top of her shoe, repeating with the other. Both, now upright, take slow, hesitant breathes, synchronized. As they begin their walk back through the windowed door, he turns to me and once again thanks me for the seat of which i do not own. And I nod back.

And they go, slowly.

Frequencies 02: sidewalk severance

A man walks a big, fluffy dog. The pet isn't overly hyper, just happy to be out seeing the passersby, the infrequent squirrel and the endless rows of vertical subjects. The dog shares a wide sidewalk with an older woman, slightly - or quite - tattered in thought, humbled by age and reacting to street corners of car horns and unable to perry jousts of speeding ghosts brushing past her withered frame. This diminutive figure, receding at juts and staggered motions unintended for her at all, struggles in her concrete maneuverings and simply stops at the edge of the walkway. She looks up from adjusting her yellowed, misbuttoned vestment and immediately motions to something barely in the distance - to the free fluttering dog. She pulls at the air, coaxing him to come over and make her acquaintance. A wide, freeing grin grows over her face, not unlike an overly eager sun stretching out over horizon's shoulders. The owner silently objects, but nevertheless brings the dog closer to the old woman's outreached hand, allowing for scritching necks and ruffled cheeks of furry like.

The man lets the woman pretty the dog, but with no interaction coming from his own personal tower. She holds a desperate conversation with the dog but subtlety holds coded discourse with the owner. As he releases drifts of thought into the afternoon sky, he does not engage, not even for a moment of eye contact or distant acknowledgement of the other existing character in this play. She, occupied with licks and heavy nudges of gratitude, doesn't notice the lasting aversion of the man caught up in his ribbons of life. Abruptly, he tugs at the tether around his bristled companions neck, pulling the exchange away from the woman's shuttering hands. With her temporary companion now whisked away, this elder of lineaged women, sorrowfully lost, reasonably deduced victim of slight humility, stands there holding the conversation, now former, with no one. Her palms gesture in pantomimed air as if to say ‘You're a good boy, aren't you?' Strange hands motion and caress, adding to the mystical of the moment, the ebb and dance of daily choreographic exchange snuffed out by disinterested parties hung up on the air of daily stock shifts or celebrity quarrel. Seemingly lulled into slower reactions brought on by divine presence, letting her know that she was the surveyor of what is true and important, the woman continued petting the dog. Though lost as if she had been crooked out of time, running a bit slow. The silverwhite hair of the neglected timepiece had fallen below her forehead and several of it's tangled, split fingers crept into one corner of her mouth.

In schizophrenic assemblage, her past spirit lives converged in one street corner moment, representing an entire existence that ceased to be significant to an entire society. That moment was the true center of us all. She looked so happy as she stroked the strong, thick coat of possible memories or dug her fingertips into the shaggy cheeks of a time secured by only her last remaining memories. And the dog was two blocks away. All the while, holding a far away, lost look upon her face... caressing something far more clutched than a late winter's fur licking palms and nuzzling for nothing in return but genuine caress. This woman hoped for an exchange from anyone, from anything - a reminder that life was still working in her best interest and the winds still intended to blow so understandingly through lips with conversations lost so long ago.

And she gestured alone upon the afternoon air, a street corner harlequin looking for something tangent, something solid and reflective ....

...something human.

Frequencies 03: Doug