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In the city of angels and demons, everything looks perfect. What’s shiny and within your reach, dare not reach out and touch. It will crumble in your hands. Merely observe. Survey the beauty, the chaos. Watch it happening. I promise no one will notice you. And you may feel outside of it all, displaced. You may feel superior. You may feel ineffectual. Just exist. Look at life happening around you. See the man reading his paper, the bus boy making his way through the maze of people with a stack of dishes. Hear the clinking of glasses, the rustling of chairs being moved around the wooden floor. Wait in line. Stay calm when your order doesn’t arrive. Smile when they screw your order up. Watch people knock into each other like penguins. See it unravel, the numerous story lines, the noise, the scattering. You’re in a vortex. It may even start to consume you. But there’s a moment when you look outside. All of this is happening around you, but you don’t hear it anymore. There’s a girl. You see her lips moving, her expressions, her vivacity; you see her inner fire. You can’t hear her, but through that glass door, you manage to catch a glimmer of her soul. It’s your little secret. No one knows you’re watching. She doesn’t see you, or anything else around her. All she sees is what’s in front of her, and all you see is her.

She speaks intently, her gestures sharp and passionate. She focuses on someone. Whom? Who engages her so? There is intimacy, it seems. She is comfortable in her domain. She is queen. The unknown party shares their sandwich with her. She bites into it carefully and quickly, pondering her thoughts as she chews. Satiated, she hands it back, continuing what seems like a description of conflict in her life. She seems proud, and speaks with fervor. I decide she is having lunch with her significant other. I strain to see outside, then stop short. I decide I don’t want to know after all. There is beauty in this exchange, and the catalyst is an arbitrary matter. I remain transfixed on her interaction, and feel like I have found my place among the rubble. There is safety in the unknown. In a world of disorder and hidden agendas, you can still encounter presence of mind. You can still find those with a zest for life, with passion, interspersed among all else. There is beauty among the chaos.