there are actually only a handful of people who know that i truly care about homeless people. i could go on for hours about exactly why, but for the moment we'll just leave it at the fact that my heart goes out to people who've had really bad things happen that have left them in such a state of despair, those who are left quite simply empty and frantic. i will add a disclaimer that i do draw a distinction between the truly 'empty' and those who are lazy.
but that said, i'm always curiously drawn to the homeless who talk to themselves. who've been on the streets, or under them, long enough that they've begun to live in a world all their own, and speak to themselves since only they know what's really going on.
i think sometimes we're all like that and just don't know it. we're some how operating under the delusion that we're sane, but in reality, we all live in our own worlds, and are walking around muttering to ourselves. we're just hoping that maybe, just maybe, someday someone will come who sees our world too. some one who'll hear us muttering our unintelligible babble, and it will some how miraculously be their language too.
some how out of our emptiness and frantic searchings in our world, they can see in and it will have meaning to them too. they'll 'get' us, our natures, our language, our vision of how things are. from then on we can go on babbling and muttering, still crazy in the eyes of the rest of the world, but delightfully crazy together. finally not alone. i can see the scene unfold on the street...
the man bent over, hat drawn low over his eyes, not having made eye contact for years. scruffy beard, shoulders rounded as if carrying the weight of the world-like a boy wearing his father's coat, much too heavy, sagging over him and it's dragging him down. as he takes slow strides down the street, muttering under his breath, a woman approaches 'his bench', her eyes dark and lonely as she searches for a place to rest. pushing her shopping cart full of cans she's scavanged from the bins in the alley near by. she whispers as she limps towards the bench and for a minute she glances at the man, and he in a territorial offensive move, looks up at her wanting to scare her off. but their lonely eyes meet and they hear the other's words. and in that moment their worlds over lap. for once, neither of them is in their own world, but they're together, hearing-and understanding-each other, truly seeing each other, and it's a small dirt and scum covered miracle right there on the street.
they'll walk off together, him pushing her cart for her, letting her lean on him. they'll keep muttering nonsense the world will never understand, but they will both know that he walked up a beggar and walked away a king. a king who after a life time in solitary, has found his queen.
people truly in love never make any sense to the rest of the world. the way they talk to each other, how they see each other, what they do, think and feel. none of that makes sense to the rest of us, they exsist in their own world together. we even joke about them, 'it takes someone like her to love someone like him...' people who only love each other, but are not really in the 'crazy' sort have a much harder time of it. for us, we are still beggars, we are still crazy. muttering to ourselves in our language which to the one we're with is still meaningless gibberish. to people like us one of two things may happen, we may remain 'crazy' and eventually be convinced that that is what we really are and that there is no one who might see us for the kings we could be. or eventually, when you least expect it, and maybe no longer believe it's possible, you might find the one who brings you the hope of your sanity.
and it for some of us, it may be too late.
2 comments:
I would like to think myself that it is never too late, even some of the concrete decisions we have made can be worked around. We learn to grow, adapt, feel, and love in new ways we never considered before. Though I may never see some of my old friends again, it doesn't mean that I will stop hoping for their joy, praying for their hurt, or longing for their companionship.
j-
you talk about concrete decisions, those are precisely the problem. there are choices we make that take us through doors we can't ever go back through. this post in particular was about finding someone, and i do not believe there is necessarily only one, but one with which you can be just as crazy as you really are and have them believe you are sane.
and as for the 'may be too late' there are times when it is too late. at least it's too late to have a sane life with that person. no, it's never too late to find them, but too late to make them your own. and of course, sometimes it's just too late period, you reach the end of your life and you've either never met one of those people, or you've passed them all by, and it's the end and done.
of course each person is an opportunity, of course we learn, of course we try to find ways not to screw it up next time. of course we all want to be sane.
Post a Comment