Contributed by Austin James
Right before sunset is my favorite time to walk. I will put in my headphones, queue up some good tunes and set out into the neighborhood. I walk through the cooling evening air taking everything in. The breeze that caresses the nape of my neck is chill and comforting. I watch the final bustle of the day as people return home from work and soccer practice and after-school study, hopefully to warm hugs, warm houses, and warm meals. The sky flares brilliant oranges and pinks, defiantly, as though fighting the encroaching darkness. Everything takes on the look of a black, cut out silhouette as the last of the daylight disappears over the horizon. It feels like magic, looks like art, and lasts just longer than a moment. Then come the velvet purples and the deep blue blanket of night. The streetlights wake up, signaling the beginning of the city’s second life. Car headlights begin to blink on like their far distant cousins, the stars just starting to appear in the sky above. Nighttime in the city has a beauty all its own and I love watching this transition. On the absolute best of days, this transition means it is time to gather my belongings, my makeup box, my current character, and head to the theater, to go to work. But even on the other days, it is a magical time, a meditative time. I love the details and the feeling of vibrant, vibrating connection.
One might think the music in my ears would carry me away into different worlds, but I find it actually highlights the reality around me. It adds a soundtrack to the beautiful dance of life, highlights the details, helps make me more observant. That is how I saw them. A pair of sunglasses, broken, lay abandoned amongst the dead leaves in the dry gutter next to the sidewalk. The pearlescent white frames told me they had once been a nice, if not fancy pair. The smokey lenses were nearby, intact but dislocated from the frames. One of the arms was folded neatly and formally while the other stood akimbo, bent too far. Though still attached at the joint by a tarnished golden hinge, it was uncertain how much longer its herculean will could hold out against the inevitable. I stopped. In the fading light I looked down at the glasses and decided to play The Airplane Game.
The Airplane Game is one I played as a kid with my mom and dad. We didn’t make it up. I think a lot of people play it. I know I found many compatriots in my college theater program who were quite familiar with it. We often played it late at night when we should have been running lines but were drinking vodka instead; or in the bright sunshine of the afternoon sitting by the fountain in front of the theater building while we were supposed to be reviewing blocking but were drinking Jamba Juice and gossiping. The Airplane Game is a spontaneous game, and one that you can play by yourself or with others. To play, all you need to do is spot an airplane flying across the sky. If you are with others you can point at it to signal the start of the game. Then you begin to imagine the story of someone on that plane. “There is an older gentleman in a window seat about halfway back, Bert I believe his name is, who is on his way to New York City. It is the first time he’s been back since he left in 1976 with his family, and although he was born and raised there, he is a little nervous to go and a little sad to leave this city that he thinks of as home… In his pocket he has a hairpin that used to belong to his mother, Marnie… Ma… Mom… He’s hoping to leave it near her favorite tree, near their old house on Kelly Street…” You see? The airplane game is an imagination exercise and details are its currency, sympathetic simulation its goal. If you are playing with other people, they add to your story. “Yeah! He’s actually taking his grandson to see the city… he’s surprised at how emotional he’s feeling and is trying not to show his grandson, Fauntleroy, although the grandson hates that name and his friends all call him Roy… It’s Roy’s first plane flight and, although they don’t know it, the flight home will be Bert’s last…” And so on and so on. The game ends when the conversation drifts away naturally. There is no way to lose and everyone wins.
I played this game with the sunglasses. I began to imagine their humble origins. In my story, they had been made by some criminally underpaid worker in some far-off factory. Although the worker had made dozens of other pairs just like it that day, for the purposes of tonight's feature I imagined that this pair was their last of the day. They put them down with some small amount of satisfaction and the joy of getting to finally go home to their daughter who made it all worth it. Some of that feeling stuck to the glasses and added to their glamour. (I had to be careful not to spin off on that person’s story and stay with the subject at hand.) Next, I envisioned that these glasses, by now named Lucia, had sat on a rack in a department store not far from where they would end up and patiently waited. Lucia’s white pearlescent frames gleamed under the fluorescent lights, those gold hinges shone proudly, and the smokey lenses promised to add an air of mystery to whomever hid behind them. Lucia was new and full of potential. They were picked up and tried on by high school girls, a guy named Barnaby Graves (they were too round for his face), well-to-do afternoon-drunk “ladies who lunch”, and a group of middle school boys who thought it was totally hilarious to see each other in what they called “bitch glasses.” All this, before finally being picked up by a little lady who was not even shopping for sunglasses. Lucia caught the little lady’s eye and they just had to try each other on. Seeing them on her face, the little lady thought they looked “groovy.” She bought them impulsively, and they made her feel young and “with it” whenever she put them on. She wore Lucia home from the store, smiling a little to herself when she caught her reflection in the rearview mirror. (Which she did purposely and frequently, all the way home.) Often afterwards, people would say, “Hey, I like your sunglasses!” and the little lady’s day would be just a bit brighter. With an earnest grin she would say, “Thank you!” as if they were complimenting her personally. When she was not wearing them, she would place them on the dash of her car where she could see them. The little lady and Lucia made a good team. But one evening, perhaps at twilight, when the sun had just slipped away and it grew too dark for sunglasses, the little lady put Lucia on the dash of her car, and when making a turn, they slid across the dash and out the passenger window. Sure the little lady pulled over and looked for them, but in the gloaming, she could not see the sunglasses lying helplessly under a nearby truck. Being sunglasses, Lucia could not call out. When that truck pulled away, bound for destinations unknown, it smashed Lucia and sent them into the dry gutter next to the sidewalk. For a time, Lucia went unnoticed and broken, stepped over and walked by. Until now.
I knelt down to get a closer look at the sunglasses. I picked off a dry brown leaf and plucked the frames out of the gutter. I felt sympathy for these poor discarded glasses. How often, I wondered, do people feel like my poor Lucia? I know I certainly have. We all start out so shiny and hopeful. But sometimes we end up in the gutter, humbled, crushed. Were these glasses now nothing better than garbage? I held the frames, knowing just how easy the feeling comes: Just lie down in the gutter and give up.
I have heard some people express, “I don’t like to ask for help.” As if to be strong means that you must pick yourself up, that you can never expect, or even want, someone to come along and put you right. I can understand this feeling, but Lucia could not do that. Given their situation, that would have been impossible. Is solitary struggle the only, or best, way to grow? I have also heard some people say that in times of trouble, when it is getting dark, the most important thing is to have friends. People to lean on, who will pick you up, dust you off and set you back on your feet again. “Without you, I’d be nothing.” But Lucia was not lucky in that regard either. Besides, should one let others shape what they will be? In this way, can one become what they should be? Isn’t that just as impossible a position, and perhaps even more undesirable?
Gently, I pulled on the bent, out-of-joint arm. The little gold hinge immediately popped right back into place. I imagined Lucia’s little sigh of relief. Encouraged, I reached back into the gutter and scooped up the lenses. Again, with just a little encouragement, they eagerly rejoined the frames. Lucia was ready to work again; Dirty, but facing the coming night and their own second life. And I thought, Lucia has the right attitude. The world is not binary. Maybe the truth of being in the gutter is somewhere in between what people say. These brave little sunglasses had hung on for as long as they could, and would have gone on as long as time and entropy allowed. But given a little help they were ready to pop into place. They used the help offered to become exactly what they were already working hard to become.
It was too dark out now to wear sunglasses, and Lucia needed cleaning. I walked on through the magical transition hour, the sunglasses safely tucked in my pocket. Before long, I was on to other thoughts, noticing other details of the world around me. The dog barking joyfully as a young man opened his front door a little ahead of me. The children yelling, laughing together, after soccer practice under the enormous, bright lights in the field of the school across the street. I smiled as I watched their parents struggle to corral them to their minivans and shepherd them home. I wondered where the person in the sleek maroon Mercedes was off to in such a hurry, that they could barely even slow down at the stop sign. These thoughts, my music and my feet carried me back to my apartment; A warm pool of light in the dark where I made my solitary dinner. I want to be more like Lucia. That was the random, silly, serious thought that floated through my head as I sat down to eat. Ready to be found. Willing to become. As is so often the case, I was a little different after my walk: I had a great pair of sunglasses. They make me feel a little more “with it.” And I think they make everything look groovy.