Visions on a street corner

I was sitting outside on a bench in front of the common building, watching people go by. The recent November chill pierced through my light jacket and made me shiver. The street nearby flashed a million colors as the early night began to fall.

I was in Texas until several students walked by carrying paper bags from an obviously recent shopping spree. The bags crinkled, and I suddenly felt like walking into a bakery and buying a chocolate éclair to consume on a green wooden public bench and a warm baguette to take home.

Suddenly, I was propelled into the past. I noticed the two grad students conversing in French over their cigarettes and, for lack of a proper French alternative, all-too-American Starbucks lattes. I noticed the streetlamps glowing softly in the dusk. I noticed the fashionable European-style raincoats and turtlenecks walking around campus. I noticed the buses, stopping and going. I noticed the pigeons fighting over crumbs. I was in Paris again, on a Saturday evening after a long day of roaming the city in the honor of winter sales with my exhausted but elated mother.

And then I noticed my mother's absence, the squirrels, the lack of freezing rain, the leaves on the trees, the bearable temperature, the girls walking in shorts too short to be mentionable, the loud cell phones, the telltale earbuds, the worn t-shirts advertising some camp, team, church, club, or other, and I was back in America.

It was a short vision, but it was heaven.