Waiting to be forgiven is a lonely and melancholy place.
Taking the train to wherever might just suffice.
For tonight . . .

~m

He was walking in the morning, Sunshine
a green and red pizza-sliced umbrella hung over his head
like a clown’s frown
He was neither here nor there but anywhere was better than his here and now

With a grey rag wool cap on his head and
a scratched up pair of $3.99 Aviator sunglasses covering his tired and muddy eyes,
he looked like some godforsaken Howard Hughes, waiting for Godot
But you wouldn’t know how he carried his world full of blue in a wrinkled leather satchel,
his personal box of rain that seemed almost attached to his hip

It was far from cool, this game, maybe this joke
kept his rarer than rare smiles in his bag, next to his smokes
because nothing made sense anymore, and it hadn’t for sometime
his box filled with rain, this life without rhyme
So one day He was walking in the evening sunshine
at least the sun don’t ever lie
and sometimes that just has to be enough
for a guy called Sunshine . . .

There are days when my eyes open on the world and I see things as they are.
I notice the difference immediately because most days my vision is subconsciously selective;
I see the things the way I want to see them.
Today, I saw sadness.
I know, big surprise, huh?
On my way to lunch I saw a woman sitting in the rain by a water fountain and she was crying as she talked softly on her cell phone. I heard her say, “Please just don’t . . . ”
It seemed like I was the only person in the screaming city of Boston that noticed.
I felt bad as I walked by but there was nothing I could do.
Truth be told I’m no saint or archangel but when I notice a situation like this it tends to rattle me.
As a writer maybe I tend to notice a tad more than the general populace does.

I got to South Station tonight and witnessed a homeless woman counting, folding and re-folding what I assumed were her only earthly possessions.
She placed them in a rucksack that looked like it had been dragged through a muddy puddle.
And again, people walked by her without so much as a passing glance.
She was far from invisible and the look on her face told the world at large
that she was the farthest thing from a happy ending.
It was profoundly sad.
If it were another day, I may have just walked by as well, too caught up in my own life.
I sat down on the train and scratched my head wondering what highway to nada leads someone to a hell like this?

Many years ago I waited on a woman that bought her daily ciggies from me.
She always tried to look her best in terms of her hair and the clothes she wore but she could never quite pull it off.
I always felt there would be no hot fudge sundaes in her near future.
One day she stopped coming in and I would wonder for years what ever became of her.
My heart sank the day I saw her pushing a rusty old shopping cart on the sidewalks of South Main Street in a bad section of downtown Worcester.
Her cart was filled with dirty cans and empty bottles that she would undoubtedly redeem to get cash for God only knows what.
She was a broken woman and a sad commentary on a reality I pray I never have to experience.
So, is it selective vision?
Lord knows we all use it from time to time because it’s easier just to look the other way sometimes.
Maybe that’s why we also have days that we ‘see’ the world as it is.
And perhaps that’s what keeps us all just a bit more humble and human in the end.
Say a prayer the next time you see a fallen angel walking the walk.
It can only help.

It seems improbable and physically impossible to feel alone on the streets of a city the magnitude of Boston but I’ve had such a day today.
I ate a meager lunch in a deserted food court, rode a ghost train with no passengers
(save for a lone and apathetic conductor that collected my money),
walked down an empty Boylston Street to an ‘I am Legend’-like South Station.
My mind doesn’t want to let anyone in today and I feel I’m struggling against a surreal and desolate landscape that is the city of Boston.
I loathe days these because I feel almost anonymous and somewhat disposable.
And nothing I can say or do seems to change anything.

I get a seat on the train and I put on my sunglasses even though it’s 5:30pm and the sun has set on the city.
UV protection for the soul, I think,
as I contemplate a jump into a vat of lukewarm self-pity.
No, that would be too damn easy.
The past several weeks have wreaked some serious emotional havoc on my sorry 49-year-old ass and this is the aftermath, an ardent and internal hangover; it’s temporary but so very intense.
I come to realize that I’m just really tired and can’t seem to catch up.
Exhausted, actually.
Sleep doesn’t help.
But writing it out has immense possibility.
And it does.

“How are ‘ya?”

{Oh, God . . . not that question again, ad nauseum}

{Me smiling}
“Just another day in paradise, buddy, just another day.”

And I carry on.

Still somewhat alone.

For the time being . . .

~m

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=20qEnKIuoaI]

Ps. happy birthday to Smoke &Mirrors (2.22.05) {you people are sick}