Life is...

My camera never took good pictures on perfect days. Sunny, warm, fluffy obese clouds. It just couldn’t focus, and my pictures always had a purple-red glow emanating from them. I just couldn’t give it up though. I was always entranced by the blue up high.

“Azure!”, said the voice beside me.

He was mumbling Italian words before, but I never heard him clearly because the stinking sweet of Amaretto filled up the space he occupied. I quietly enjoyed it. Covered my face in disgust so he couldn’t participate in my delicious delight. I once loved Amaretto, and I miss its soft burn in the bottom of my belly.

“Azure, bella, azure…toe-day deh sky, it breze.”

I turned around and looked at him straightway, and his head was high in the cloudiness above. Smiling this ridiculous smile as the wind guided itself across his face. He breathed it in as one would lap up water after a midday’s jog. He was talking to me but he didn’t even have his eyes on me. Much less open.

“Bella, toe-day you see juss how much azure can fill yourrr pam!” and he held his hands high, attempting to reach its impossible heights, but his determination almost made me think that he could.

He stretched for a long time, stopping short of a breath.

Then he decided to climb down and slump. Looking ahead in an almost dead stare.

“I hold deh key to life, you know, miss…I hold…deh secret toe all living tings.”

I started to gather my things. Clearly, this man was lost from his permanent psych ward residence. How he landed in the middle of Thornhill was a little disturbing.

“No, no!! No leave! I give you…look, look! Look, miss, I give you!”

I calmed down and sat back down. Looking at this old, dingy Italian man, rummaging through his little paper bag of God-knows-what. He was digging for gold it seemed. Rapidly, fast paced and breathing as if it was his last, he crumbled that bag in and out, upside down, rightside up and in and out again…and then, he smiled. He grinned and laughed aloud. So loud the men at the full service gas station across the street took a second glance at his commotion. I was mesmerized and a little weirded out by this dingy old man in his linen beige top. He wore brown pants, with one distinct hole right above the left knee. Black sandals, black socks. A fedora hat, but half of one, almost. Looks like part of it was burnt off. And there he was laughing his might away, clutching this unseen object in his little paper bag.

He was laughing for a good 2 minutes, until I decided someone needed to say something. As I was about to politely tell him where to go, he stopped abruptly and looked at me. His eyes were blacker than before and he held out his palm, stretched tautly into a fist-full of his God-knows-what-secret-of-life-and-all-living-things thingy.

He asked me in the softest, most paternal voice “You shure you want to see it?”

“Yes, geez, just show it to me already!!!”

He slowly moved his hand close to my face, opened it up finger by finger…and then, I saw it…

…in all its mystical glory…

I beheld the key to life.

And it was a…