Somewhere near the plaza, you'll see a set of crumbling stone steps. Here, the weary traveler may sit unmolested and enjoy the warm mountain sunlight. And if you visit in the autumn months, you'll see a man sitting there alone, peeling an orange. Sometimes he smokes a cigarette. He wears a straw fedora hat, brown trousers and a beat pair of sandals. His countenance – well, I’ll let you witness that for yourself. Suffice to say that I didn't believe in the saints until that moment...There are days when the air crackles with energy. You savor that. For me, it happens in the fall, when the weather and leaves are crisp. Everything sparks at the touch. This is when I feel most alive – when the year is in the throes of death. This is when I saw him.
He too was entering the winter of his life. He’d achieved that magisterial calm, that unbreakable peace, that resignation. A distillation of decades of hardship. I stared at his wormwood hands, his fingernails splintering at the tips.
And this is what I ponder as I sit a little farther up those stairs, tucked in a desolate cafe. The old man is gone now, but I think: may we live to be as ripe, and if we do, may we be allowed to sit on the steps in peace; may we enjoy the sun as it warms our scraggly stubble and our craggy dispositions. And when the time comes, may I blow away and be forgotten, like so many brittle leaves in the season’s waning…
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