His hands are shaking, but not as fast as mine. Increased heart rate in my case. I am amazed he walks by himself, and somewhere in the back of my head I feel a sense of pride. Pride? For him? For me? For humans?
This guy is old. I mean that in a way you say China is old, or maybe the phrase “rule of thumb”. They have been around forever, so no one really thinks about it any more. If anyone is related to him and still alive I imagine they have a different understanding of time. He has a long beard, white. Is that where the stereotypical image of god comes from? The oldest dude in your family, the one alive since before time?
His beard irritates me while also holding me in awe. I see no food clinging, hanging on, and I realize he has probably had more than my lifetime to figure out the eating trick. I ended up cutting mine off, severing a part of my appearance so I could eat bagels with cream cheese without crying. He does what I want to do, and so very easily.
He body is… tempered. That is perhaps the one way I can describe it. Tanned, though I imagine he could live in a cave for a year and it’s color would not change. He is dark enough to make me think he gives off a particle that creates vitamins in other people nearby. His feet, barely wrapped in aging sandals, are like those of a stone sculpture. I can’t tell if he has bad posture or is just holding the world on his shoulders, but the visual is the same.
He eats, slowly, deliberately, in a manner that makes it hard for me to breath. How can a person eat that slowly? Four-year olds eat faster, but surely this man’s motor skills are developed. This is not a matter of capability, but rather awareness. He eats as if he was meant to eat, nothing more, nothing less. I bet he sleeps like a baby, and that bothers me. Why am I comparing him to a child so often, so intently? What is the food doing to him, what does food do to me, what does food do to a small child? When he moves, shaking, a miniature seizure wrecking his body at every breath (if he does indeed breath), what does his body do to the energy he has consumed?
So tranquil in intent, so entropic in being.
Thank you, old man in the attic. Thank you.
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