Observing the World and Creating My Own Gennesis Sierra

Her unnatural red hair.

The limp in his walk.

The crease in his dark, velvet forehead.

The sorrow-filled eyes of the woman in the back.

His mother abandoned him when he was only two years old. She was valedictorian of her high school class and got her masters in psychology.

They moved to a shelter home after the father had gotten into a terrible accident and couldn’t work. The landlord was not sympathetic.

The stories and scenarios I make in my head are so far from the truth, but the observer in me can’t help but to connect the things I see to the unknown. As I walk down the street or sit on the train I take everyone in. The complexity in the simplicity is perplexing. The somber expressions of the ordinary passersby often mask vividness.

As I observe what most people find useless and small, I try to enter into their minds and in an instant I create an entire life's story. I am transported back to his childhood, playing with the little stuffed bunny his grandmother gave him when he was in the hospital. The same stuffed bunny sits on my lap 20 years later as I watch him kiss his wife goodbye before heading out the door with a limp in his walk. I stand in the corner as I watch her unnatural red hair sway back and forth as she...