Bloom

Down at the coffee shop this morning, I saw a woman. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I witnessed a woman, since women like this are an event; once seen, never forgotten.


Her hair, once brown at some point two or three inches into the past, was bleached blonde with all the naked savagery modern chemistry can muster. It was either damp or heavily saturated in gel, probably to keep it from splintering like a collection of cheap matchsticks.


She wore a sheer pink blouse which, through some miracle of tailoring, simultaneously managed to float like gossamer, and yet clung to each of the luxuriant rolls of fat that were stacked like terraces down the sides of her body.


Distressed hipster jeans, in all senses of the word, were paired with cork-heeled platforms to complete the look. And to bring this ensemble to vivid life, she was screeching to her recalcitrant child, who was loitering somewhere further down the corridor and thus impeding his mother's progress to the hot chip counter.


Throughout the ages artists have used their talent to capture the essence of women in a way that their models could not do themselves. This woman, however, had managed to take her own essence and bring it up to the surface and beyond, broadcasting it out to the world at large, with a raw semiotic power that even the greatest artist could never muster.


I was so overcome by her unswerving dedication to self-expression that I had to avert my gaze and flee, lest I become overwhelmed by the urge to break into unseemly but well-deserved applause.