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Remembering when I saw lovers on a bathroom wall
We see the world not as it is, but as we are.
~Anais Nin, author, 1961
Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, quoted Nin in his bestselling book and added, “”¦or as we are conditioned to see it.
Friday, May 17, 2024, I traveled home from a Lubbock business trip. I decided to avoid Interstate 20 and take the back way where I would see more of what makes West Texas unique. I drove through time-forgotten towns hanging on by a thread, where they prayed for rain but at the right time and in the right quantity, and where they braced themselves every day against the wind that constantly blows uninhibited across the plains. I saw horses grazing. Cattle, too. I saw mighty wind turbines like squadrons of prop planes flying too close to the ground. I saw Texas grasshoppers, or pumpjacks dotting the landscape, some rocking up and down and others as still as the death of an industry.
I saw miles and miles of Texas.
I also saw this”¦
Yes, that is a brick wall dutifully painted in a calming Adobe Beige with at least three coats of durable semi-gloss. This piece of the wall is directly above the only urinal in the Idalou Dairy Queen bathroom. What I saw in this unlikely place and inopportune time was a picture of romantic love.
Do you see it etched accidentally or providentially into the unintended pattern of brick and paint? Look at the middle bricks, and then focus on the one on the left, the most prominent in my picture. Do you see them? A man and a woman from some 1940s Hollywood movie. Maybe he is Clark Gable and she is Greer Garson or Lana Turner. They are facing one another, clearly (though not pictured) in an embrace), this close to sealing mutual affection with an epic kiss.
If you cannot see it, look inside the circle below:
See her eyes closed and his locked on her, drinking her into his being, like a man who’s seen a vision and never wants to wake? I see it (while I am peeing) and I hear Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler in his inimitable scream-singing.
I don’t wanna close my eyes
I don’t wanna fall asleep
‘Cause I’d miss you baby
And I don’t wanna miss a thing
If you still don’t see it, I printed the photo out, doodled on it, and scanned it back to the computer”¦
I have seen horrible and beautiful things. I have seen the brilliance of life and the blight of death. I have seen a baby girl gasp her first and a weary mother sigh her last breath.
I have seen what I came to see and some of what I hoped never to see. Mostly, I have found what I was looking for at the time.
And so have you.
I see trees of green Red roses too I see them bloom For me and you And I think to myself What a wonderful world I see skies of blue And clouds of white The bright blessed day The dark sacred night And I think to myself What a wonderful world The colors of the rainbow So pretty in the sky Are also on the faces Of people going by I see friends shaking hands Saying, "How do you do?" They're really saying I love you I hear babies cry I watch them grow They'll learn much more Than I'll ever know And I think to myself What a wonderful world Yes, I think to myself What a wonderful world Louis Aermstrong Source: LyricFind Songwriters: George David Weiss / Robert Thiele What a Wonderful World lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Concord Music Publishing LLC, Kanjian Music, Tratore
You may think there is no love left in the world when, in fact, it is everywhere, if you look for it.
