Hi.
I wrote this story...
Streetcorner Omnipresence
Street Corner Omnipresence
I sat beneath the shadow of the street sign, the sign that cried "Fourth Street intersects Sunrise Boulevard Here" in green and white. The street corner was a busy one, and I could not walk any farther. I had made a phone call to someone to give me a ride the rest of the way. My legs were weak from walking the 1800 miles between my heart and my soul and my spirit. I was weak on this street corner.
I sat against the sign pole, brown and copper and gold with rust, and it swayed under my weight. The pole was not the most comfortable thing I had ever sat on, but I figured I would not be here for long. The corner is engulfed with shadows at this time of morning, the shadows of houses across and high rises across from the houses. The shadow of the high rise was growing on me as I sat there. The street corner was contradicting like the mind, and yet, seemingly hollow like the world. The houses were dilapidated and the high rises were mere shadows of what they once were... Time worked incognito and these buildings were evidence.
From one of the houses emerged a young Latina woman, with a baby in one arm, and a suitcase in the other, bursting at the seams. She was halfway down the walkway to my corner when her husband or boyfriend, brother or father, stopped her. "Stupid girl! Get back inside, you're my wife," Question answered, wife, "and I know damned well you're not going anywhere but back into the house!" He was wearing a white shirt and tan shorts with no shoes on. He was about six feet tall, not a very impending figure. She was about four and half feet tall, but from my perspective she looked about four and a half feet shorter than his ego and eccentricities.
"Jamie, this is no way to raise our child. You don't understand me, and you probably won't understand our child when he's old enough to question where the hell you've been." She replied, the solace and the apologies passed and past away deep within her tone.
"Well, when the bastard does ask where his father is, tell him that you took him away from me! That's right! I blame this all on you." He stormed back in the house.
She, alone, looked for a ride. None. She merely walked north on fourth street, away from me. The wind carried her cries, and her apologies for the coarse language to her baby. Inside the house, the sounds of things breaking was evident. The sounds of broken hearts were all around this street corner, be it in the offices and apartments above me on the southwest and southeast corners of the street or in the houses across the way. No one was happy, and the buildings frowned in time and tempo with the situation. The whole street, I speculated, was a living, breathing metaphor for contrition. Society apologizing for what the proletariat has to go through, the world apologizing that it can not be the Utopia ever desired.
I turned around fully, slowly. This corner was odder than I had realized. I have yet to see one car, and one can usually say that that is not the best thing. I looked east, down Sunrise. The road was haunted by the horizon at the end of it. The road knew that it goes on, but the horizon does not, cutting it short. The road was in slight disrepair with the yellow lines cracking and chipping as if someone was chiseling away the barrier between east and west, as if someone wanted east and west to meet at some point. I looked the other way, west, and it was the same story. The horizon being the blatant murderer of sight and sound, touch and smell, east and west. I thus looked up into the colored sky, blue with wisps of clouds from the western films. I was supposed to be riding into the sunset, the sky told me, but where is your golden horse? I looked up and east to look at the buildings, the buildings were the pessimistic reply to the sky. The buildings were saying that the ride would never come and that I was destined to degradation. I guess that is not so bad.
Suddenly there was a crash, a raging and storming subdivision of the road as four cars came towards the intersection, none with any sign of stopping. They collided before they collided, as if the drivers knew what was to become and gave up on their lost hope of survival beyond the fittest. They collided with great force, crumbling under weight inertia tic. I stood, stunned by what I had just seen. I watched as four bodies flew from four flaming wrecks to collide again. I saw within them as their souls collided. They were merely mannequins now, their life sucked out of them, their soul only remaining to finish the scene presently unfolding. The bodies hugged each other grotesquely, accidentally. The bodies fell flat onto the shards of metal. The smell of rotting flesh blew in the air, blowing up my nostrils as I inhaled. I had to get away, but I could not.
Knowing I could do nothing, I sat down again, resting my tense back against the rust again. As I watched, I saw time speed up in the road, as the fire lapped for air faster and faster, as the bodies became ashier ashier, as the cars further became modern art rather than getaway vehicles. The world around was still slow as I moved my hand towards my face to wipe away my hair that had maliciously blocked my view, trying to tell me not to watch what is happening. The cars were melting into puddles on the ground and as they melted, the time slowed gracefully, like an aircraft touching down from an extensive mission to explore the unending, returning from a mission to heaven; unending, unquestioning.
The street corner was silent again, no tumbleweed to embellish in the cliché of the empty midway when the villain is in the road and everyone is inside, nothing to let me know that I am still alive. So, I sat and moved my hands... Moved my hands across my body, against the abrasive service of the cracked gray concrete, up the pole above my head. My feet shook and I stood up. I knew if I turn, I would see the houses against the empty backdrop of a ghost town. I knew if I turned I would see the office building that so haunts my dreams as their shadows grow on me during the hours, offering me shade from the lying sun. I knew that I was the villain in this western film out of context. These people were sane enough to stay indoors, away from me. They saw beyond the facade and into my soul. They saw how cracked it was, but what they did not see was the journey I was taking to amend these cracks with abrasive adhesives called apologies and how I was on this long journey to merely repair my apathy, my soul's atrophy. This is why I reticently lived my life and crawled myself into an apathetic hole.
A man was walking down the sidewalk opposite me. He caught glance of me, saw the look of maliciousness and malcontent for this deep corner of the psyche, looked across the street, as if signaling cars to stop, even though there were none. I could see that he was homeless, with his oversized, and overstuffed with alcohol, sweatshirt. He had a bag in his hand, presumably more alcohol, and he was bounding across the street like some sort of rabid animal. His beard was matted, but it was thin and gray enough to sway in the wind as an oil rag would.
He came bounding towards me, the scent of something unknown, but ubiquitous about him, was evident. He stopped, saw me, I slouched against the pole in fear, and sat down again.
He leaned down, that odd scent evident again. He bent down and said, "Can you see?"
I looked at him, glassy eyed and innocent, as if my eyes could plea to him silently for him not to hurt me.
"Son, I can see in your eyes that you... You're not like everyone else..." The pungent drunkard hit that one on the nose. People called me the iconoclast. They called me the breaker of molds. They called me names for it, too. It was not all praise. But, the atrophic apathy led me to another end of the spectrum of mood colors.
"Dammit, boy, I'm talking to you!" And suddenly, I realized it. This man was not paying attention to what he was saying. He was afraid of me. I noticed that he was shaking as he stood back up. This man was merely egocentric and eccentric. He needed to feel a lift from response, and when I refused response to him, he became afraid, depressed, fearful, closed, paranoid, reticent. He became like me for a split second. He saw what brought me down, saw what became of me being brought down, and stopped.
"Well, now... This all your damned fault." He bounded off in a flash... Gaudily, in reflection, he wore his brown and tattered sweatshirt; he wore his torn and stained navy blue sweatpants with pride. The pride of an unknown kind, the pride that only the failed have. The pride is all that was left of this man, and it showed. There was an acceptance meeting in the center of his forehead. Beneath the stress lines of his forehead, the vein had protruded as his mind stressed working to not show his true self. His cheeks twitched as his anger heated like coals.
I heard behind me footsteps. I slithered around the pole, too weak from realization to get up to turn around and face it. The man was coming back from the murderous horizon. He was running now, not bounding. He was running full speed. Like a freight train uncontrolled and its only load being a few 40 ouncers.
He stopped in front of my sprawled out body, I looked up at him questioning. He raised the hand without the bottle into the air, balled into a tight fist, as tight as his meager hands could manage, and he brought it down upon my shoulder with all the force of a drunken sledge hammer. I whimpered as the bone shattered. I cowered as his hand released his grip on the bottle to grip air in a fist. He brought his sledge hammers down all over my body, bruising me, shattering me, nearly killing me. I grabbed his bottle with my one good arm, and drank whatever was contained within the bottle. It tasted sweetly bitter, sourly ugly. I felt the pain no more, and his blows were merely that, blows. He realized this, looked at my bruised face. Tears welled in his eyes... I could see this man was stalked and haunted by something so much more than fear, depression and paranoia. He was haunted and stalked by the tears not cried at funerals, the words unsaid. He was stalked and haunted by all he never did. He was haunted and stalked into submission. He knew this, as did I. He did not want to know this, however, and that showed as well.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." He repeated this many times, and soon, his tears moved from saliva to dry sobs and then to blood. I had nothing to give him to wipe the blood away as I lay on the ground in a floating, out of body state. I merely watched as the blood ran down and contrasted the browns and blues and rips and tears of his clothing. He was on his knees now, looking up. I watched as he fell backwards, onto his back against the cold, hard concrete. He curled into the fetal position, the blood pooling around him... He died in that instant, as the buildings frowned and sighed.
With all this death within the past two hours, I would have to speculate that the Latina woman who emerged so long ago is dead as well. Unknown about her baby, however. He may just carry on some legacy that the family may have. The Latina lady, though, walked off, in reflection, with no spot in society for her, a single mother. There was no spot or time for a single mother like her, even if she had four jobs trying to raise her child to the best of her ability. Her footsteps echoed against the concrete, they echoed these feelings. She walked with an air of apology. She was society's variola, growing larger and larger, until it bursts at the seams and action will have to be taken or infection will ensue.
The car wreck. It was merely a four way collision and death, its way of telling me that directions, like personas, should never meet. There are some people that will never mix, and those people are named North and East, East and South, South and West... The people within the cars had no families; those people were merely uninhabitable stray animals searching for the piece of meat on the hunt for companionship. Somehow, there was a sexist aura around them, but I could not care very much about sexism, as per the fact it is transcendent and is part of history's taciturn paradigm, as with racism. Racism merely shifts, like the bodies, from color to color.
Suddenly, people began to emerge, bustling, from the office buildings. And, like ants, they filed into a line, down the road... I half expected someone celestial to drop a leaf to see what would happen if they lost their way, if their sound and light was so interrupted by something so vile as a leaf in the road. They all wore gray business suits, of polyester and wool. Their hair was all part to the right, border lining a comb over. They all were one portion of one person, one part of this society, one part, like a limb, doing the job. They all had their fortes, and their vocation was based off of this knowledge. As they walked, there seemed to be two lines that suddenly emerged, as people walked next to, caught up with, and began to speak to the person ahead of them. Their vernacular was colloquial, as if they had nothing to talk about except the days work, their vocation. These people had no friends, since they were all nourished to do one job and had no idea what the other person's job did or meant.
The stream stopped, and the last person swung out from the rotary door. This last person was an anomaly, shorter than the rest, his suit and tie a lighter gray. He was Napoleon and they were the world. He was to conquer them one day. He walked up and past me, the air carried him well, I thought, as if to give him another inch onto his height. He swung around fast to meet my eyes staring at him. He moved like a dancer. Walking in step and time. He looked at me, the grease in his hair glinting in the sun.
"Hey kid, this will all be mine someday. Mark my words." And he walked off, into the street, without signaling cars as the homeless egocentric had. Suddenly, a car came up fast, a car unseen by Napoleon dynamite. The car was speeding, like a bullet train, towards fate. The car hit young napoleon with the force of a jackhammer, as the parts of his body contorted and the hood, the windshield, and roof of the car in rapid succession. The car stopped, the body laying on the front of the car, the blood that was bent on world domination bleeding through the cracks in the windshield. His words I will mark on his grave, I thought.
The driver in the car got out, he was wearing a wife beater and a "Member's Only" jacket. He had an angered look on his face. "Ah hell no! Dammit!" He studied the body for a few seconds, and grasped it at the point where it was the least bloody. He took the body and carried it to my side of the sidewalk, where I was laying down.
He turned and looked at me, dazed, confused, possibly stoned, possibly freaked. He looked at me with eyes full of fear and worry. He was nervous about what he had done. He looked at me, still lying on the ground, and said, "This? This cadaver? Goes no where but where ever rotting flesh goes. Which, I suppose is into the mouths of vultures. If anyone finds out, I did this? You're so dead, my friend, you are so damned dead." He walked back to his car, reached in and got some paper towels from the backseat, and began wiping off the backseat. He finished that which he was doing. It seemed odd, though, that he was doing this from the inside, since the blood was leaking through the cracks in the windshield of his fiery red hatchback. He looked at me, realized what I was just considering, and got into his car, and turned on the windshield wipers. The blood was drying though, so it was as if there was red fog, a fog acidic, on his windshield. He drove off, fearfully.
I rolled over and looked north on 4th street and began to think, where did everyone go? Why did everyone go? What was all of this? I got up, and squinted down the road. I then turned to look west on Sunrise, and the road swayed, the heat of the afternoon radiating off the cracked east and west barriers. I decided that ride would never come and that I was to walk.
I got up, and crossed fourth, being sure to signal for cars even though I saw one. I saw what had happened to young Napoleon, so I figured, better safe than sorry. I began to walk, my bare feet hitting the ground and vibrating my body with every step, my shoulders rising and falling with each step. I walked, tired and slouched. I did not want any more of Sunrise and 4th street. It was all too much for my tired head to even want to consider.
I reached the horizon, the horizon murderous. I looked back and I could no longer see the pale buildings and the poor housing. I could see the horizon now. It was a sad, sad, day, I thought, for I have been murdered by the horizon, told what I can and can not see. The horizon is truly the omniscient and ubiquitous murderer and inspirer, calling people, like a siren, to come to it, but right in front of the horizon are sharp rocks or...
I had veered into westbound traffic on Sunrise, and a car hit me, and I began to bleed from my bruises aforementioned. My friend emerged from the car.
He looked at me with all the horror of someone who had just killed their best friend. "Shit, I had just dodged someone back there, he was lanky and out of it... And now you... I'm sorry my friend... But I guess this is goodbye..." He pushed me off the hood of his car, and let me bleed to death on the side of the road. He got back in his car, turned around, and drove off. I knew he was not going to get help, I knew there was no help to cleanse these bleeding wounds, these broken hearts...
I began to realize, that, beyond the silver dreams of electric sheep, and beyond the dreams of those eccentric, there in lies the ego. The place in which I lie, selfishly caring about myself, my broken and mangled self. I lay there, engulfed in pure feelings of lustful hatred, a want to be back on the street corner. But, I suppose that this is the only way my ride would have ever come.
And I thus completed my journey through the final gate...
The meaning of "judge not" in that verse is that we are not to condemn a person or put ourselves in the position of knowing everything about the state of their soul.
In defense of the Pharisees (as idiotic as it is to defend them), their problem with Jesus was how He put Himself up on the same level as God (forgiving sin, "I and the Father are One," etc.), I don't think they really had a problem with His "love, freedom and equality" speeches. Unless if they complained it was wrong to teach those things WITHOUT the law. But the whole "There is only One God" idea was what kept the Jews from accepting Jesus.
I definitely agree people "must address all the issues." But I think that is all the more reason to deal with the issue of skankiness. It seems to me like that is the issue more people are having a hard time grasping. And, ..although I'm now aware this comment is making me out to be pretty lame and rude.., if we all "look past how one wants to make money," wouldn't we end up ignoring problems/sins/issues like embezzlement, theft, prostitution, drugs, murder, etc?