Origami Girl

The origami girl happened to stand right in front of me in a little tucking of San Francisco. She was frozen, struck by the words on the page of a book titled “Origami: for those who know nothing of paper folding”. Last week the book in her hand dealt with the philosophy of existentialism, the past, the present, and the future of a dying society. Before that was a simple cooking book by Rachel Ray.

As I focus on one section of this bookstore she wanders each lane until something catches her eye. This week an Origami book, next to a book on catching butterflies.

What could there possibly be to draw the attention of the origami girl? A cup of black coffee on a slow roasting afternoon across the street from the single bookstore she visits. Perhaps an evening stroll by the crystalized ocean as the skyline blends between shades of purple and yellow? There’s no way for me to know of the possibility that rests on me ten, twenty, forty years from now.

That’s a terrifying thought, so I squeeze it with the rest of the thoughts that terrify me. I place the book tucked between my arms on the shelf where I found it. A deep breath then I commit to the moment that is now. Forty years later and I’ll either thank myself or have killed myself. The isle has never felt like forever until now. Hundreds of books I’ve never read fly past me as I’m crossing this chasm of ambiguity. Signs swing, contracts flu, and I reach the end of an aisle. Just as my body makes the turn to the aisle over. She sets the book on Origami down, sips the last of her black coffee, grabs her crystal blue purse, and proceeds to pass my shoulder.

“What a tragedy,” a friend comments.

“A tragedy, indeed,” I mumble a confession.