(i just write)

We went roller skating on my thirtieth birthday, and since then I've been back to that night a dozen times in my mind.

I keep thinking about this man. He's an older black man wearing a creamy cable-knit sweater, slacks, and a pair of closely fitted black roller skates.  He moves around the skating rink floor with his arms loosely crossed behind his back. He slowly picks up one foot at a time, swings from side to side, around other skaters. His pace never varies.  It's not too fast, not too slow. There are no jerks or starts, only this unhurried, inexorable stride.

And he loops over the slick floor and is easy. And I want to loop and swirl and be easy. I can't help thinking that it's the calm he shows that's the thing. That if I can get the calm, the looping will come. But then I think it's his age and wisdom, and his practice in looping without a hitch, adjusting to changing circumstances with a smoothness that isn't no movement but is constant movement around, through, beyond, that gives him the calm. Maybe he wasn't always this way. Maybe he was once me, with my legs carefully bent and my slightly daring pushes and the hands that wobble when my skates take me farther or faster than expected. Maybe he used to wear rental skates, or forgot his socks and had to make do.  Maybe sometimes he had to relearn things he thought he knew. Maybe sometimes his muscles forgot. Maybe, maybe not.

But now, tonight, he is like the shadow of a bird on the ground. He is like a guardian angel. In his motion are all the secrets of the world, at least the ones about roller skating. He is inevitable.  I can't take my eyes off him.

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I'm just writing with Heather of the EO today. Come play along?