They do so much with so little. A little girl, her shoes in one hand and purple plastic bowling pin in the other, is a ballerina or maybe a champion sprinter. The grass in the park is full and healthy and the afternoon breeze glides through the eucalyptus and oak trees. Cars pull up to the sidewalk and Mexican children spill out and sprint for the swings and the slide. I remember something about my mother once telling us to not run around like a bunch of “Wild Indians” (obviously, this was long before it was considered rude to use this term for native or indigenous Americans…). Weekend father watches from his bench as his four-year-old daughter jumps off the swing and lands, mouth-open in the gritty sand. Unsure whether to cry or laugh she returns to her swing and absentmindedly pushes the empty seat back and forth more than a little confused about what just happened. She doesn’t make eye contact with her dad, who’s busy reading his newspaper. 

I needed to get away from my computer keyboard and screens to try to figure things out. I wonder why I stay in the safety of a corporate job that doesn’t use any of my skills or capabilities. I can’t seem to find a path beyond my current invisibility. It feels like I’ve been at this my whole life and yet nothing has changed. 

But it’s these moments in the park watching the children and wondering at their wonderment that reminds about the music and words within me that getting better technology or a new computer won’t fix. This part of being, this part of loving, this part of extending part of ones self—the children, the running and the falling—this part that is so often suppressed because there appears to be no one that would understand these childish sounds that we naturally make. This is love. 

This is why I embrace my girlfriend, Dani, in the night. This is the reason why I stroke her hair and kiss her silky skin, this is the reason I make love to her: I want to take what I know to be inside myself and share it with another, I want that part of being: An uncluttered innocence and hoping eyes in the darkness of my small apartment. We love and sleep and I wonder over our communion. Does it ever get any better than running and dancing and acting like “wild Indians” in the park? JBB

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Tags: childish imagination, Joe Bustillos short stories, short stories, the artist within, writing projects

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