City Light

“That’s the thing about this city, it will kill you, if you’re not paying attention, just a warning. So many go about life with their head in the clouds, like these brick canyon walls are as magnificent as the red sand stone of Utah’s Arches, without the clarity clean air provides, or the quiet that comes with desolation. But then we aren’t in Utah, so can’t expect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to follow us down the trash laden alley ways and rodent infested subway tunnels. But then I’m used to the decay. Plenty before me have seen the same things, but it don’t seem to bother them or they would have done something about it, wouldn’t you think?”

He was like that when he got wound up. I never could find the reason for the anxiety, but one moment he’d be sitting in the park and the next, he’d be off chasing some pigeon down the street, cursing at it for causing the demise of civilization as we, “knowed it.” 

He could get, creatively wordy, when he put his mind to it. He was a poet at one time you know. Course, that was back before his mind started missing a cog. You never really see it coming. It’s not like you forgot to oil the chain and one day the pedals refuse to move. Although it’s more like the gears get worn and pretty soon the teeth don’t have enough of them left any longer to hang on to the chain. Well, and then you know what happens, everything grinds to a halt.

I know the feeling.  Well, I suppose I can’t really know the feeling. Don’t think two of us can have the same feeling, and I know he had his first, so I’ll let him have it. He needs it more than me anyway. When you are good at something and then loose it, it’s not like loosing a… well whatever. It’s like I would think having someone stealing your hearing aid so you can’t listen to yourself sing in the shower. Maddening I know, but then you don’t get more genteel as you get older. People should be told that. 

They got books about everything, but how to get old. It aint’ like you can practice up for it. One day you are just like a yesterday, and then the next day you are like that old person who goes to the park to feed the pigeons thinking they are ducks, because that is what you are supposed to do when you get old and go to the park. No one tells you; you look like a fool. Someone should write a book about how to get old. It would be a big help. Not for me of course, but for him.

I know he ain’t going to get the hang of it by himself. I can tell by the way he buttons his shirt. I know his hands are getting to where they don’t necessarily respond to his wants, but then asking for help ain’t the worse thing in the world. Think you'd get more upset by having your shirt look like two different people are wearing it at the same time.

I think he believes asking is somehow not connected to the getting. I’ve seen him sit on the bench, just watching the glasses that fell off his nose when he bent over, to see if the bench was dry enough to sit on. There they were laying on the cement, and him just sitting there looking at them. He can’t bend over you know. Something to do with his back, or something. He won’t say. Embarrassed I assume. But then when you get to a point all you can do is coral your own glasses with your feet, which I must add are clad in unmatched socks, I can’t see where asking for a little help is all that embarrassing.

Of course a lot of what goes on down here is between us and the birds. Just old people. Not many care, people or birds I suspect. It’s like they ain’t ever going to get old. Maybe they know something I don’t. What with the bombs they are building and the diseases that seem to be popping up everywhere, maybe they don’t believe they are going to get old? 

I had that feeling once, course that was a long time ago. Everyone starts out not thinking about being old and then it sneaks up on you. All that daredevil stuff you got away with, you realize how lucky you were. A few cuts and bruises, but not impaled on the front of a bus, or on a train you can’t figure out where it’s going and how come you are going with it.

I found him like that not too long ago. Got a call. He was sitting at the bus stop for what Bob, the dry cleaner guy, says was a couple of hours. He got worried, so he calls the home, they know I know him, so they ask if I can go get him. 

They were trying to be nice; I know. No one wants to be helped to a home they can’t remember. That only happened to me once and I didn’t like it. Haven’t had another tequila since. Something about cactus that don’t agree with me. That Olivara type stuff that comes from that plant that looks like cactus but ain’t; I put it on bites and itches, things like that, it don’t bother me for some reason. Seems to do some good. I’d tell him about it, but I’m afraid he’d forget what to do with it and eat it or something. Bad enough what tequila would do to you when you are in your mind still belongs to you alone, but him, the way he is. Probably go rob a bank or something, just to prove he could still do it. Not that he ever robbed a bank that I know of, although some days he seems the type.

He’s settled down a bit. Over there watching them play chess. I don’t know if he ever played but he had the kind of mind that I believe would have caused him to be good at it. Artistic types you know, have a knack for things like that. 

Too bad really. Some of his poems I heard tell were really good. I was never much for that kind of thing myself, have to think so much about every little word, punctuation mark, it made me tired, although I did enjoy the sing song of it. But then they quit that. Now, just sounds like someone don’t know when to quit talking. I think he was the singing type of poet, or that’s what people I think said. I never heard him read any of his stuff, although they got his books still in the library. 

I have to wonder sometimes if he even remembers those times. I’m glad we live here in the city, even though I am a country type person myself. He is not. There’s something about the buildings reaching up into the clouds I think gives him a sense of being part of the evolutionary road through eternity. He was the kind of person who liked to argue the merit of words. Not just the meaning but the intent, the way they are strung together, like clothes on a line. Color, shapes, movement, I can still see that in his eyes when he looks at a squirrel and says, “You think a squirrel could learn to play checkers? I got a board, and he’s got the acorns. If the squirrel has to wait for evolution to catch up, I won’t be here to see it.”

He went off down the walk and found a bench in the sun. Looks like he’s talking to a squirrel. Better go see before he gets himself into trouble again.