Around Lafayette Reservoir (New Edits)

1. Ah, California, with your paved-path wilderness a mile down the road from Peets, this morning I got on the merry-go-round, joined the parade: joggers, walkers, skaters, bikers, people with dogs and babies, talkers on the phone, perfume of sunscreen, masses of walkers with walkmen — even two people with faces deep in books, whose feet somehow kept finding the next step. 2. Something’s changed since I last came here fifteen years ago, when I tried to greet each person who went by, crossing at times some microscopic line into flirtation and judging savagely the ones who would not respond with a wave or a word or a friendly look. Now a married man and more secure in my domestic world, my soul is content to swim within the reservoir of my own solitude. And if my glance is not returned, all right. Halfway around The lake I greet A couple I know walking their dog. The husband can’t shake hands, he holds the leash in one of his, a cup of Starbucks in the other. 3. When someone passes me— in this case not a jogger, even, just a guy with longer strides— there's still the same chagrin and shame I always felt, in spite of knowing what I should have felt. Vestigial instinct leaves me with the sense I've lost a race. But now I notice that a man who's been in front of me the whole way, who jogs awhile, then walks, then jogs, has stopped and left the path to pee. I pass him with a surge of childish glee, like a miler ‘cross a finish line. How strange it is, the human mind. 4. Finished with my two point seven miles, I sit upon a bench and write, watching the strollers come and go, figures for a modern “Sunday in the Park with George.” The geese honk, water ripples, and the breeze blows gently on my cheek. Down on the concrete bank four unkempt, red-beaked vultures strut almost too ironically, as if to say, “This too shall pass! ” Reminded of passing time, I glance over at the parking meter by my car — whose blotch of red tells me that indeed it has!