old men
This summer, everywhere I look, I see old men holding onto things, as though the buildings are about to come apart or start tumbling down onto our hats.
Two days ago, walking in an underground mall in Namba, an old man with wrinkles in his pants older than me was leaning with all his leverage against the store fronts, slowly moving from palm-press to palm-press against the wall. Lean hard to the wall. Long pause. Move. Lean hard. Long pause. . .
The rest of us flowed quickly past. At one point while I was watching, he came to a window front that he judged wouldn't support his weight, so he "dashed" to the next section of wall before pausing again.
Yesterday, I saw a man in clothes not of this season simply frozen static, both hands up against an apartment building's corner. As I rode by on my bike, he didn't shift or twitch. The morning sun slowly turned his shadow beneath him.
And just now, as I crossed a busy intersection to the east of here, I saw a man draped in a shade of faded green clinging to the grey steel box that controls the traffic signals. His arms were hooked over the far edge of the box as though his boat were about to tip and he knew to lose touch with the thing would set him adrift alone in the seas of change. His grip was locked and scared, perhaps how all of ours should be if we really knew what was what.
For some unreasonable reason, shabbly-dressed old men always make me imagine prophets. Mumbling strange impromptue incantations. Their messages too complex to understand. Too many tongues in their mouthes for even them to fathom, much less for us to get it when they speak or try to write it down on grimy paper or scratch it on the sidewalk. Aware of this impossiblity, I feel somehow urged to leap towards them in imitation, to somehow simply follow their lead without understanding. Someday I might. You might find me there on the railing near the freeway on-ramp, covered in car exhaust soot and clinging to a yellow caution triangle with my fingernails growing long and thick.
You might honk, but I'll be too absorbed in memorizing the stringing loops of truth to nod.
Two days ago, walking in an underground mall in Namba, an old man with wrinkles in his pants older than me was leaning with all his leverage against the store fronts, slowly moving from palm-press to palm-press against the wall. Lean hard to the wall. Long pause. Move. Lean hard. Long pause. . .
The rest of us flowed quickly past. At one point while I was watching, he came to a window front that he judged wouldn't support his weight, so he "dashed" to the next section of wall before pausing again.
Yesterday, I saw a man in clothes not of this season simply frozen static, both hands up against an apartment building's corner. As I rode by on my bike, he didn't shift or twitch. The morning sun slowly turned his shadow beneath him.
And just now, as I crossed a busy intersection to the east of here, I saw a man draped in a shade of faded green clinging to the grey steel box that controls the traffic signals. His arms were hooked over the far edge of the box as though his boat were about to tip and he knew to lose touch with the thing would set him adrift alone in the seas of change. His grip was locked and scared, perhaps how all of ours should be if we really knew what was what.
For some unreasonable reason, shabbly-dressed old men always make me imagine prophets. Mumbling strange impromptue incantations. Their messages too complex to understand. Too many tongues in their mouthes for even them to fathom, much less for us to get it when they speak or try to write it down on grimy paper or scratch it on the sidewalk. Aware of this impossiblity, I feel somehow urged to leap towards them in imitation, to somehow simply follow their lead without understanding. Someday I might. You might find me there on the railing near the freeway on-ramp, covered in car exhaust soot and clinging to a yellow caution triangle with my fingernails growing long and thick.
You might honk, but I'll be too absorbed in memorizing the stringing loops of truth to nod.
1 Comments:
when I was a boy about seven
I was waiting to cross HWY 11
an old man with coffee & tobacco
stains tapped me on the shoulder
asking if I was a Salovaara
gave me a quarter
and walked away
I remember the tar paper shack
he lived in with its Good Cheer
wood stove shining through
his open door never another
word was ever spoken
Perhaps he was just spooling
the final truths as I was still
trying to just find a thread
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