Silhouette at the Cascade

At night the Cascade turns gold. Floodlights on travertine, the carved sunburst glowing like a hearth, and the steps full of students, dates, and one novelist who climbed further than her knees recommended. I set the camera low and sat in front of the lit wall until I was nothing but outline: hair, shoulders, the little architecture of glasses.

I like myself best as a silhouette, I think. It is the format with the least biography in it. The wall does not care who is sitting there, and for ten minutes neither did I. The city hummed below, the stone breathed out the day's heat, and somewhere behind me a busker found the one Beatles song that survives translation into every courtyard on earth.

Tomorrow I return the white Niva to its archivist, washed, and pack for the flight home. Tonight I am an outline against somebody else's national monument, and it is enough.