II: Crazy

April 6th, at 6pm. Shade is supplicated by buildings; the air is a slowly cooling 73 degrees Fahrenheit. The breeze smells like blueberry muffins; the light is even, hazy, diffused, neutral.

Earth flags adorn this block and an older man weaves through their posts, a shambling skeleton threatening to fall apart. You can hear the hollow innards rattle as he sways. Shuffling, he navigates the alleyways that connect and betray everything, a narrow behind-the-scenes. All these hands you think are gesturing to God are just asking a distracted stagehand to pull the curtains, for fuck’s sake, so they can get on with it. A life lived too long is like that– an awkward stage moment where nobody is quite sure if they’re supposed to applaud.

“I didn’t have a knife with me.”

You like how she says “a knife” rather than “my knife.” Her face, too, and her body, do not imply a knife: they imply rows of stockings in a mahogany drawer, silk sheets, an old pair of taped-up glasses, Sailor Moon fan art, lip balm. Her skirt’s cousin is hanging on a display rack for salvaged clothing that a bored employee has rattled onto the street. (Maybe she has a knife. She gets in her coupe and smokes a cigarette in it before she leaves.)

“and how it’s really all pedestrians’ fault, it’s totally fascinating”

 

“I am them” (a little kid. maybe she is)

You find yourself distrustful of shapes, of gestures, of kindness even, though everyone seems to have enough of that to spare, especially if you have money. Much in the way the upper-middle-class is distrustful and terrified of the homeless: see “the homeless” similar to “the gays”– if you break it down to “people without homes” and imbue a little humanity it’s an even sillier thing to fear– “Oh, I have a phobia of heights, what about you?” “Frankly, I’m terrified of people without homes.” As though because these people have no Place they are incapable of rendering meaning on the world around them– as though without Place they are meaningless themselves. Also, you read, from the turn of a nose, the copious use of hand sanitizer, they imply uncleanliness, mental instability. But everyone in your life is mentally unstable. Not that you’re looking for it, not that it makes you comfortable, but it finds you. It finds comfort in you.

“excuse me miss. my stomach really hurts- I just need something to settle it– yeah I was gonna try, I was gonna get this cream ale beer– I was just sitting down with my tattoo artist, I really need to get this tattoo done-“

This guy. His arms and gaze and posture. You think he’s probably drunk the heroin Kool-Aid. He cycles back around at weird angles every few blocks, ignoring crosswalks and cutting corners and emerging from doors to buildings that you’re certain he didn’t walk in to. He sits down in the parking lot across from you (thirty feet away from a man in a tailored suit standing in spot 13 and texting on his Blackberry) with a blanket, and a blank cardboard sign, talks to himself- and stretches. You hear the intention behind every word and get the urge to nod and say “yeah” every few minutes. You are not even real to him, you are a memory he made years ago.

His name is Waterdog.

“yeah“