The pebble lady

She blocks the path, gets too wide in the escalator with her suitcase on wheels and too many bags to carry. People in a hurry who rush to the left must slow down their momentum. It takes no more than five seconds for the normal passenger flow to be slowed down, modified.

It looks like a big rock falling into a river. The water protests, splashes the intruder, but nothing does. It has at its disposal all the Earth’s gravity. The river swells and takes on its left or right. If they are not one, but rock piles, a mountain of debris, a tree cleverly felled by a beaver, congestion would be fatal, the ecosystem would take it for its cold.

The little old lady is like that rock. She has the gravity of time. Her hesitant steps pierce the nervous magma of passers-by and upset the harmonious chaos of urbanized people.

Finally, the old lady arrives on the first floor, hesitating, regains her balance and reaches the floor after almost causing a fat lady to fall behind her. But the way is clear now. The impatient can recover their momentum, while others still have to deal with the diagonal path of the lady who seems lost, or not interested in finding the best line, the right one or the most comfortable for her breath.

I’m about to go around it, too. At the last moment, she decides to change direction. I almost push her over the edge. She saw nothing, seems to have finally found the right way, smiling, her eyes brought back to the ground as if she was looking for the stones left by a Little Thumb of her knowledge.

One day, I hope, I will be like her, dragging my feet and no longer taking care of important things, dreaming out loud without having to cling to urban demands or even a salary.

But for the moment, I still have a lot to prove, to find, to brood, to hope, to...