Suspended Questions

Its noon as I walk out of a cafe onto a quiet street. As I walk out I can feel the intensity of the sun which I assume must be up there suspended directly above, in the clear blue sky. It is this subconscious deduction that results in me finding slightly odd the fact that there is a man standing on the pavement just a few yards away staring straight up at the sky. Instinctively I look straight up; then curse myself at my stupidity as I avert my gaze a micro-second too late after feeling the full intensity of the midday sun in my eyes. Once I have regained some vision I check again if the man is still there. Sure enough he is still there; still looking up. I quickly give up trying to answer why this man is looking straight up at the sun.

Instead it is ’how’ that scratches at my brain. ’He could be blind’, I say to myself. A closer look at the man’s face dispels that idea. I walk around the man, cautiously maintaining my distance. I look up a couple of times shielding my eyes slightly and each time only find the blazing sun and nothing else. ’This is ridiculous’. I look around wildly to get some agreement on the fact that there is something rather odd here but there is no one else in the street.

I finally decide to ask the man himself. ’Excuse me, sir, hello’. No answer. I try again: ’Hi, can you hear me? What are you doing’. I try a number of times but am met with silence. I wonder if he is deaf, but that is unimportant. I have been playing a mental game with myself thus far and am quite certain that I have accounted for and subsequently discounted all the logical reasons that could explain how this man is able to stand there staring at the sun.

I look around again. The street is still empty. Something inside my head tells me to walk away and go on with my life. Another, stronger voice refuses to budge until all is figured out. Very perturbed, and barely hanging on to my sanity, I feel I could give a leg and an arm to unravel what seems like a complete mystery. In a blaze of frustration and excitement I run at the man and push him out of the way.

I look up and am very surprised to not find my eyes being burned by the scorching sun. Instead there seems to be a grand piano suspended in midair a fair distance above me. With its white and black keys it is grinning a broad, broken and ironic grin at me, mocking me at my failure in solving the mystery. It begins to fall…rapidly. Within a flash and in an entirely useless intuitive leap that a mind can make in moments such as these, I remember noticing that there was a shadow where the other man was standing (‘I wonder what he’s doing now?’) Finally, the mystery is solved. ’He wasn’t staring at the sun; he was staring at the piano.’ A sense of relief and of restored faith in the normalcy of the world rushes through my head. Until…‘What was holding that piano suspended in mid air? Why is it falling now? Why have I failed to step aside?’ A grinning grand piano rushes through my head.