A Scene On a Parking Garage
There were 6 people on the parking garage. Perhaps there could have been more, but this was during the time of the Corona Virus, with most people staying in doors, and the few who didn’t were either smart enough to stay apart or stupid enough not to care.
There were 3 outside a car, the trunk open and them taking stuff in and out, the occasional laugh echoing off of the low walls of the rooftop. Perhaps they were roommates, bored of their dull interior and trying to escape into the summer afternoon, catch a glimpse of the sun as it dived down beyond peaks of mountains yonder. Perhaps they were part of the arrogant few, those who neither knew the dangers of the virus, nor cared enough to find out. It mattered not their purpose for meeting, nor the cause of their laughter or reason for their being on the rooftop. They were there, and they were a part of the scene.
There were 2 leaning on the wall, heads slightly angled towards one another, looking over the edge. There was a beautiful sunset, slightly obscured by some passing clouds, yet they did not care to gaze upon it. They faced opposite it, towards the dull and darkening sky, nowhere near as loud and boisterous as the prior group of 3, yet there was a sense of camaraderie about them. Perhaps some cousins, separated from the shelter in place, who felt the need to catch up with one another, hear each others life story. Perhaps they were just friends, who were both free to meet up on a rooftop and shoot the breeze. Like the group before, it mattered not for their purpose, for they too, were a part of the scene.
And then there was the lonely 1. He sat with his back braced against the low wall of the parking garage, his car a few yards away from him, a tripod with a phone recording the setting sun. He had nobody to share this moment with, no friends to gaze upon the setting ball of golden light along the horizon, no family to talk about how they’ve been doing, or what has been going on with them. He was simply alone. What was his purpose for being up here then? To gaze upon the setting sun? To escape the tight enclosure of his home? Perhaps he wished to gaze upon a world quieted through necessity for quiet. Perhaps he simply had nothing better to do. Like those before, it mattered little for his purpose, for he, too, was a part of the scene.
But what was the purpose of this scene, one may ask? Why would one dedicate the time needed to commemorate a scene of such insignificance?
And one would answer as such, that insignificance is in itself a form of significance. That, without the gray and the beige of what we call life, there is no point of reference for the stark yellows and reds, nothing to base excitement or joy off of. What is black without a grey to be darker than? Orange without a red to be yellower than? Life is best appreciated tin it’s entirety, the boring with the exciting, the heartbreak with the indifference.
And so the scene evolves. The group of 2 leaves first, one opening the trunk of his car and the other wheeling his bike over to haul inside. The group of 3 follows a moment later, the soft thump of a closing trunk reverberating off of the parking structure. Then there was the lonely one, his back against the wall, his tripod by his side, his laptop in his lap. This too, this insignificant moment, matters, perhaps not to any of those involved, but to the cycle of life itself, that the very fact that something occurred in that location, that people were there together yet apart, lent it importance. For what is importance than acknowledging the necessity of something’s need to happen, or significance of it happening? Wasn’t the very fact that these people who were alive to witness this, to have been alive at this moment, to have had lives that have brushed so closely, yet so far apart, doesn’t that lend it significance.
The importance of this scene is that it happened, that these people existed together at this point. There is nothing more or less to that, it is simply what it is.
Significant due to it’s insignificance.
