"Look, Sweety!"

My title here could be the title of a statue; a single pose clipped from a fluidic motion and rendered permanent.

As my bus whizzes past an intersection, I see a father holding the hand of his little girl. He is bending down to her but his gaze is across the street, towards Winnpeg's grand old train depot at the corner of Portage & Broadway. His arm is extended, culminating in a passionate point with his index finger. In the same hand he also holds a lightly filled plastic shopping bag, still swaying from the initial outward thrust of his arm.

Something about that building inspires in him a burning desire to share it with his little girl. The glimpse I see of her visage is of that startled moment you get when you realize that somebody is trying to show you something but you haven't fully comprehended their intent yet. Like when in the movies someone in the crowd cries, "Look, up in the sky!" Before the first guess of, "It's a bird!" or "It's a plane!" there is a collective focusing of attentions onto the specified object. This moment of pre-discovery is an elemental human instinct, taking only a fraction of a second to bridge the gap between unawareness and awareness, yet it is frozen on her face at the exact moment that my bus whizzes by her. Her mouth is slightly agape; her eyes are darting back and forth.

And then they're gone from my sight.