Rearview Perspective
A rearview mirror has a limited breadth. In this small area, I was watching a man in a wheelchair contend with getting out of the car and pressing the latch that would close his trunk from where he probably took out the wheelchair. I was getting comfortable and had not yet turned off the car. I was listening to a song I wanted to finish. And I was looking at this man have to go through his maneuvers. I assumed he worked at the college because he was parked in the “Staff” lot.
The world has made it easier for this person to be independent. The wheelchair was a well-calibrated piece of machinery, helping him direct it at every turn of the wrist. I was studying him in my rearview, suddenly self-conscious of what I must have looked like. I was the routine indifferent jackass who had suddenly had a moment of understanding.
He was gone, and in the limited scope of this rearview, I saw another person get out of her car, and then another that was closer to me, presently closing the door and locking it. Each staff member going to work was one row closer to me. It was layers of distance.
I then took notice of how the electric light in this parking garage did not cross the sunlight coming through various openings, and yet the frontier mixture of the two types of light were running softly together, providing me with the ambient light I could not quite see.