Watching

Sitting here in the shade of a brick building whose brick has shed its soft alluring demeanor and has taken on the stories of those that have passed; those that live and those that no longer care or need to.

When time marches slowly enough past our front door, it allows one of two things to happen. Either we look for detail and appreciate the effort, or we get bored of the sameness, and begin to think of things we have no business thinking about, but for the distraction.

Jammie Espiers sat on his stoop overlooking Franklin Avenue and marveled at the lack of movement. It was as if time had not only stopped but disappeared. It had been, over the previous year, a succession of disappearing days; it was as if the batteries of the world were losing their power and no longer had the strength to push people from their homes into a world that now frightened them. 

Streets once filled with bustling traffic, bicycles, laughter, the irritating music emanating from the ice cream truck, gone as though they had been erased, only the chalk dust, a reminder of what once was, remained, or it could possibly have been mistaken for pollen. The kind that makes your eyes red and appear to rain.

Jammie enjoyed the confusion, the noise, it settled the thoughts lost in his head. It cleared his glaucomaed vision. He no longer saw life, but a steady stream of spirits drifting down the street, heads down, lost expressions on their faces, as if they were told to go somewhere but didn’t know where, or how to get there.

Only the street dogs and cats, possibly a few pigeons, smiled at them as they passed. One dog barked a welcome, not one looked up. It was as if they no longer cared about the now, they had had enough and just wanted to go home; where ever that was. One old man appeared to stop and ask the pole in front of the barber shop for directions. He stood watching for the longest time, watching the pole spin its helix like descent into freedom, before he too, left. He appeared to have a tear in his eye, but it may just have been a speck of new light. Something about that time, after day but before night, when chaos is just bright enough to see but not experience. You now it is there but can’t quite make it out or touch it, so you continue to feel in hopes of…what, finding peace. 

Jamie knew the feeling, he’d experienced it before, just recently, as a matter of fact, science, whatever you wish to call what is taken for granted. It had left him as lost, as those that passed on their way down eternity road.

He smiled at the old man as he passed, the old man although skeptical smiled back as if he knew something Jammie didn’t. It gave Jammie the hope he needed to see past yesterday, possibly the day after and begin to recognize that although life wasn’t what he’d hoped, it was better than wondering what living would have been like, had he not attempted it.

Yes, he’d lost some things, found others, said his share of goodbyes, hello’s, but never Aloha, as he found the fact that something could be opposite, and yet be the same, a frugal excuse in brevity, although he appreciated the sentiment.

I should explain. Being one of those who lives now in the place exited by Aloha to make room for, “so long it’s been good to know ya,” I not only appreciate the notice, but have begun to believe that hope lives in those that chose to believe in it. I can’t begrudge people for not understanding, I couldn’t understand either until I did, and then I couldn’t understand why it had been so difficult, but then most new things appear to belong to someone else, until the tab shows up.

It was like that for Jammie. He had come to believe, because he was all alone, that no one else existed. But then that is how we all feel at one time or another, especially when college acceptance letters arrive, or your prom dress is lost by a newly installed Uber delivery person, distracted by a marquee that proclaimed, “POLITICALLY CORRECT LESSONS: FREE.”

Jammie watched as the last of the parade of escaped souls moved towards a buckled turquoise sunset. Music began to be hummed in the background, the squirrels he believed were at it again, although he suspected someone had put them up to it.

He had forgotten to remove his hospital attire, perhaps the reason they all stared at him. Although blue wasn’t his most becoming color, it was necessary. He’d done his best, although he didn’t know how to explain his lack of creativity, when it came to miracles. He gone to the classes, did his best to pay attention, and yet the miracles preferred to stay in the heavens, no matter how much it thundered and lightninged.

He was about to say good night to the empty boulevard when he looked down the street, only to see one of the travelers returning. He believed he recognized the old man, the one who prayed to the barber’s pole, and was disappointed by its lack of enthusiasm for life. No matter there are other poles, other barbers, perhaps other miracles that don’t need lightning to see how to find what they aren’t even looking for.

The old man stumbled up to Jammie, who by this time had forgotten to keep smiling. The old man not deterred by the oversight, stood staring at Jammie as if he were a vision or a burning bush. He had stared long enough and with enough enthusiasm to make Jammie stop being nervous, take a breath, and forgive himself for not being who he believed he should have been. “Some things just are,” words he believed mumbled by a drain pipe, somewhere nearby. 

The old man continued to stare as if he were about to ask Jammie to join him on his journey. But then as helixes do, he began again by picking Jammie's tears from the stoop and handing them to him with a practiced smile, that may have been his. And then he said the most curious thing, “I can’t forgive me, until you forgive you.” Then he turned, and much like Chaplin would have, shuffled towards the buckled horizon.

I could tell from the blank look on Jammies face that he misunderstood the intent of the confessional, had skipped all the beatitudes, and went straight to the alter where the real bodies were kept. He knelt, and then as quickly as if he’d seen a ghost, he looked into the holy puddle that was formed by the thundered rain, made a backwards sign of the cross, although that may just have been the reflection getting the procedure wrong, and smiled; well, the corners of his mouth turned up, slightly. 

Jammie stood for a long while, as if remembering who he was, and then looking down the street as he expected to find himself walking away. I climbed up next to him, so that I could see too. A bed sheet had been hung out a window. Someone had painted on it with an old shade of lipstick, the kind my grandmother had worn before she became a majorette leading her band down Infinity Road. “Heroes,” it said, out loud, so everyone would hear, regardless of their faith, or inability to feel.