Pretty Woman

Yesterday, my eyes beheld more human beings in one day than they have ever before beheld in a week's time, best I can remember.

I saw a few knock-out young women who walked and dressed like runway models.  These women are accustomed to being looked at twice, you can tell.  Wearing striped-tights and tiny skirts, wearing flouncy fabrics that look like a fairy's leaves and petals , wearing perky hats and purple hair and beaded forehead bands--these stunners turn heads everywhere they go.

If she is walking with a man, he tries to look all casual, like he's used to it--but you can tell: he's still new to being so close to the prize.  If her companion is female, she's carrying the camera, always at the ready to capture a moment in which the knock-out is posed: hanging from a streetcar;  waving from a harbored ship; coyly smiling, leg lifted, beside a fountain.

The star herself  never carries a camera.  The star's sidekick-- as accustomed to being invisible as her friend is to turning heads--is plenty pretty in her own right, but she knows her place: three or four rungs down. It's she I watch, how hard she tries to be happy that--as usual!--all eyes in the esplanade are on her star friend, skimming past her as if she's invisible.

Then there are the clumps of girls, all walking together, new to themselves, so conscious of their own unique signatures of self: the tattoos, the jewelry, the brand new breasts, the click of their new high heels on pavement.   En masse, skinny or fat, whatever ethnicity, they start blending in with each other, all looking enough alike that you'd be hard-pressed to say (if you saw one of their pictures on a poster later) that you'd actually seen her.

And then my eye beholds the one I'd choose as Most Beautiful Woman of the afternoon: dressed in tennis shoes and a long ruffled blue skirt, a light-weight sweater wrapped around her waist.

Her walk is so jaunty that I literally turn around to try to see the face that goes with the movement, only to notice that I'm not the only one who wants another look.

Most Beautiful is not carrying a heavy camera case or bag; whatever she has with her must be stored in a hidden place.  She walks purposefully, like a woman who is happy in her own skin, yet oblivious to being watched. Her short all-white hair, the only natural silver I saw all day, and whatever else gives away age: I'd put her in her eighties.  But by her walk alone, half that.

I was among the tired and frumpy tourists: carrying a heavy bag (both cameras, a bunch of maps,  a pancho) and feeling limp from the heat, the wrong shoes, and hours of standing in line waiting to be transported from one place to another.  I'd been advised by the woman at the health food store to be prepared for the "micro-climates" in the city.

My pick for Most Beautiful--though I never actually saw her face--was not frumpy or limp.

Striding with ease on her own feet,  all her parts seemed to fit together, move together, in the way of only the most vibrantly alive of any age.

People watching reminds me that whoever and whatever we consider beautiful probably carries something we desire for ourselves.

I'm way past desiring model status--though I enjoy the flamboyant beauty of young women as much as anyone.  But when I see someone who's older than I am, yet carrying herself lightly, moving with ease--Wow, I think to myself, that's how I want to be one day, when I grow up some more and leave more unessential things behind.