The man lifted his arms suddenly then and then again, pulling and reaching while looking always upward. It looked like he was reeling in an invisible, formidable dinner fish, holding a large spool of clear fishing line in his right hand. Juicy Planet followed his eyes and searched the salted sky between Lake Michigan and the charmless buildings of the Gold Coast near Lake Shore Drive, but could not see what the man was seeing.
He pointed a number of times but the only movement was a sparrow diving drunk into a treetop.
Juicy Planet moved then to stand right next to the nodding man named Juan, who lent us his arm and finger to gaze across until we were startled and blessed with the tingle of discovery as the tiny, so tiny, red kite appeared, snaking and dancing like a spermatozoa at last free from the boredom of biology and skipping instead through the unseen waves of the 40 mph lakeside wind, and losing itself until our eyes found it.
For 3 cents, Juan had turned a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 paper into a sparkling kite church, where nobody ever cares how long it takes.
Filed under: every day, lost and found | Tagged: chicago, church, faces, finding, fishing, floating, flying, kites, lakeshore, seeing, strangers, tracking, wind
