{"id":1806,"date":"2011-03-12T08:15:43","date_gmt":"2011-03-12T13:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2011-03-12T08:15:43","modified_gmt":"2011-03-12T13:15:43","slug":"odd-little-polygon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1806","title":{"rendered":"Odd Little Polygon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an odd little polygon of a park I pass on my way to work from the bus stop, sits an odd little polygon of a pond.\u00a0 This morning I saw, floating placidly, paddling lazily back and forth, mallard duck husbands and their wives, and two geese.\u00a0 The contented company were sipping their morning coffee, reading the paper and chatting together about the day&#8217;s prospects.<\/p>\n<p>The park is unremarkable.\u00a0 Few trees grace its narrow confines nor is there much lawn.\u00a0 The most notable item on that small triangular block is a very large, very noble statue of Simon Bolivar, the great 19th century liberator of much of Latin America, seated hero-like on a great steed, set on a pedestal on a terrace of stone.\u00a0 Besides that, its just a few scrubby trees, some grass, and an odd, unattractive little polygon of a pond with some water birds.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I considered writing a story about those ducks and geese.\u00a0 I still might.\u00a0 Remarkable, those poultry, swimming calmly around or just sitting and basking in the early morning sunlight.\u00a0 The oblivious birds didn&#8217;t care a whit for the buildings and people and cars and buses around them.\u00a0 The scene might have been plucked from some isolated pond in the middle of the wilderness somewhere, and plopped down in the middle of this bustling city, this nexus of world power and influence.\u00a0 The odd polygon, next to old General Bolivar, sits just blocks from the office where the Leader of the Free World himself sits, but neither that fact nor the lesser but still highly significant government workers (ahem) walking by made a bit of difference to the ducks.<\/p>\n<p>All that mattered was the crisp morning, a cool damp still in the air from yesterday&#8217;s rain, and the peace of that moment.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1812\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/IMG_8316.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1812\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1812\" title=\"Odd Little Polygon\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/IMG_8316-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/IMG_8316-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/IMG_8316-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/IMG_8316.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1812\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">As if nothing but the moment mattered<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an odd little polygon of a park I pass on my way to work from the bus stop, sits an odd little polygon of a pond.\u00a0 This morning I saw, floating placidly, paddling lazily back and forth, mallard duck &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1806\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[66,196,197,199,198,195,83],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}