air

            Two guys in old wife-beaters, combat boots, and boxers walk over the Deringer St. Bridge at around 10:53 pm. It’s June, so they aren’t really cold, their body language says they’re old friends. I think they’re interesting, being the only people that have walked by me all night. As they stop at the middle of the bridge and look down at the river slowly passing by, carrying little boats with people caught up in their own worlds, I listen in to their conversation.

            “The air.”

            “What?”

            “Do you ever stop and just think it?”

            “… What?”

            “The air! Do you ever just think about it?”

            “Not exactly. It’s just kind of there, what else is there to think about it?”

            “Exactly! It’s just there, that’s the point.”

           

            “I don’t get it.”

            “We’re surrounded by it at all times. We can’t see it, and if it’s moving, we can’t feel it. It doesn’t have a smell to itself, only carries the smell of the things it passes by.  How does such a thing happen?”

            “Fuckin’ magic? I don’t know, why the sciences quiz? You’re reminding me of Ms. Garfunkle, you remember her?”

            “Yeah, of course. She fuckin’ stank. Knew her shit, though. Anyway, how is it that we aren’t like the air? Look at you, you don’t flow. I don’t flow, either; no one does.  The air flows pretty constantly, from one place to the next.”

            “We came out here to talk about not being air? Really?”

            “No, but how did it happen? We’re sitting on a huge rock right now. Rocks don’t exude air as a basic property of themselves, so where did this come from?”

            “Space. All this shit comes from space, you know that.”

            “Yeah, but if there’s air in concentrations like this out in space, why can’t we breathe out there? You’ve seen astronauts, they wear all that goofy shit just to be able to survive out there a few minutes. We had to invent that, and here’s this rock right here that just has this shit. We dubbed it ‘the atmosphere’ and most people don’t even give it another thought. We’d be fuckin’ dead if the air wasn’t here.”

            “You’re serious? You’re blown away by gravity? I know what to get you for your birthday now, at least.”
            “What?”

            “A hole. Then you could test gravity and be blown away to your heart’s content.”

            “I’d like that very much, actually.”
            “I know.”

            And without further ado, they walk away, leaving me to watch the people in their own little worlds. I can’t help but notice that nothing changed.