Feeling-This stretch of time is haunting and somber: the faces look in on me through glass aquarium walls. I disconnect, I derail, I disattach to the beat of their retreating footsteps. I can't share with those who are cautioned by share-means-care, and they no longer express anything at all except critiques. I'm at a jaded 34 years of involvement in this shifting presentation and I don't have the apathetic dismay I see in those that edge near my fire. It isn't so much caution of me, or the cowered withering of their individual past experiences, that my surrounding people inwardly endure, alone; it is the reluctance to hope, trust, or reach outward. I am alone. I've known this, I still know it, and I'll forever learn it. I plod onward down the empty sidewalk on this oppresive, burdened afternoon.
Plan-I left the bar. I left with the spark for adventure. My companion fled and I could not face the mannequins that pose with attitudes on our public transportation system. I didn't want to be one of those frozen, controlled experiments today. I decided to see how long, and difficult, it would be to walk home from my work. I work downtown ATL and live in the burbs. My Mom had asked what I would do in a disaster situation, seeing as I take public transport to work and home daily. I wanted to see how arduous the trip would be, with the provision that when I tired I would simply wait on the bus. I made it approximately 4 miles. I just spread my travel, my stroll, my steps outward and onward. There wasn't the fear-based disaster, I wasn't angry about a malfunctioning vehicle, I didn't exit from a car filled with hate and cutting words: I was just walking on a Wednesday because I had nothing else to do, really. I stopped at the covered bus stop and looked around. I should walk more, it wasn't bad. The walk became an experiment. I would only take buses home today. And I did; I took the #2 from downtown to Avondale and then hopped on the local route 120. I had to walk from the final stop on that route about a mile to my house. So, 2 buses and close to four miles later, I was home. It is coincident that my final arrival at home was exactly the same time as the train/bus commute delivers.
Sensory-Flowers planted for no one, anyone, whoever, this one. Orange and brown and tall and extending to me as I pass the man with no shirt and I'm glad. Grafitti, horns, heat, a scream?, a cat, a tree, and more horns. Lights are flashing orange or yellow or confusion on the streets and I can't hear the bus and I walk along to the slap-slap of my brown work shoes. I don't hurt, I just absorb. I just listen. I just look. I just intertwine myself into this street scene. I'm innocent, I'm a walker, I don't mean anything-please don't worry...as I take everything into me, swimming in humanity, spitting the stream of society out of my mouth as I lanquidly stroll like a buoyant walrus. This bus is a hurried, labored kangaroo and we are fleas. Yea, you lady-you are flea on your squeaky cell phone and your useless voice...like a lamenting cricket in the summer nights. I nod off in boredom, bouncing in the rhythm of the bus and the road...and the crickets/fleas/kangaroo riders leave me be for which I am very grateful.
Placement-Find me, discover. Open and turn over the stone. Behind that bush, between the door and the wall. I'm right here, over shadow and under drape. I am in this place, left of right and right after being left behind, I am vast distance on a cheap map.
3 comments:
Yeah...I think I do. But is deeper when I write more comedic when I speak.
Oh...sheesh. I get this a lot from friends of mine who ask "Why do you always write such depressing stuff?" Sheee-it, I don't know. That's what I feel and write, and what I say is witty, goofy, clever, abstract. It is the same but the voice is funny and the printed things are dark.
So, you--along with everyone else probably--want me to write the funny. I'll work on it this week, promise.
i want to use this as my signature on outgoing emails: "I am vast distance on a cheap map"... very cool.
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