On Monday, the manager shows up to pick up clothes to take to the plant, right at closing time. He gives me a ride home, and I tell him about Sunday's street racer car round up. He mentions his kids' school. He found a relatively good school for them in the extended neighborhood we both share. He tells me it's the only school which isn't performing miserably around where we live. I ask him if all these street racers are from these listless schools. He thinks that their parents are buying them their cars, and the kids have no jobs. Tuesday is the 2nd, and my sister's birthday. I hit the clinic down the street from home before work, to have blood drawn. It turns out my doctor is a resident, and not at this clinic all the time. She'll be back this Thursday, at 9 AM. I can't get an earlier appointment that day, and she ain't around that often. The girl who takes my temperature at the door doesn't even know who my doctor is, if she's still here, or that she's female. So I had better not look a gift horse in the penis. The lab where my previous doctor saw me must send their blood work out to be analyzed, as I can't make an appointment there sooner than a week after blood is drawn. Here, they get the results in 24 hours. Medicaid in the house...literally. Soon I'm on the trail, then I'm off for a quick snack, and shortly back on the trail again. Somewhere past the dog park, I can tell my back tire if flat. I get off and pull out my new hand pump. The tube won't hold any air. I begin walking when a guy who just got out of his vehicle, parked in a lot along the trail, tells me my tire is flat. He offers me air from a portable generator he always carries in his car, because "you never know when (your tire) is gonna go flat." My new bike rims are designed only for tubes with Presta valves, but I appreciate his offer. I shortly approach a ramp off the trail and am around a street corner. Soon I am (luckily) at an intersection of two main avenues. I call the manager where I work, who gave me a ride home last night. He picks me up in twenty minutes and deposits me at work. He's the man.
Thursday. I'm off to check in with my doctor. She has most of my medical records from my previous PCP and specialists. Last night I took a peek at the transit system schedules to determine the quickest way to work from my doctor's office. My appointment is at 9 AM. If I get out at 9:30, I can ride to work and be there on time. I arrive at the clinic, just down the street from where I live. My doctor is a half hour late. She wants more blood work, on my PSA levels. I don't get out until 10 AM. My only hope of arriving at work no later than I told my coworker I would be, is to ride straight across town and try to catch a bus down the street of my place of employment. My coworker is neurotic and unpredictable. If I'm more late than I tell her, her head spins around. I make the bus with just a few minutes to spare. During some time this week, I'm on the way to work, turning a corner onto the street a block down from my own. At the end of this street is the long silver camper trailer which appears as if it may be from the 1950s. Before it, in the spot where various campers have been since the first I saw one here last May, is another camper. Where the license plate would otherwise be is a note. It explains that the motor vehicle department, along with all other state offices, remain closed. That this is why this camper has no license plates. The hand written note assures any reader that this camper is licensed. I'm not sure this excuse works for every vehicle on the road without plates, but I suspect the owner of this camper requests special dispensation for a lack, perhaps, of access to plates through mail or delivery or internet purchase, due no doubt to a lack of fixed address.
Saturday is the end of another week. Again I approach the turn onto the street next to an open field on my way to work. It's an overcast morning with a damned chilly wind. A line of vehicles once again borders the curb. This morning, there is a flat bed trailer with some junk on it. There is one trailer in front of it. Beyond is a flat bed truck, also with junk in the bed. In front of this is a second trailer. In front of the second trailer is a vehicle with the hood up. I roll past this parade of parked traffic when suddenly, I spot a child-like female between the last vehicle and trailer. Her face is both remarkably young and incredibly plain. It's also an obvious shade of grey in the light of the rising sun. She's bundled up against the cold, the hood of her coat off her head. She exhales smoke as I pass. Some nine hours later, I'm on the way back home. I'm just off the trail, on the way home from work. I'm turning back onto this same street. My route home takes me immediately off this street and up a hill. Over the hill, at the end of this street, is where I make another turn. It's at this corner when I hear a labored engine behind me. It's the weathered Toyota pickup from the 1980s. It turns the opposite direction.
Superbowl Sunday. Earlier the previous work week, I had a flat tire along the way to work. I brought home the wheel with the flat, instead of the entire bicycle. Now, if i can get the flat fixed, instead of taking it back home, I will have to take it all the way to work. And I will have to do so on the transit system, on the day with the least convenient schedule. Not that the difference is much anymore with the current transit system. I catch a bus u the street to the train, to one end of the pedestrian mall which is coming back to life. I go inside the transit system station and stroll past various homeless to grab a bus schedule, for the bus I need to take me to work. Then it's a bit of a walk to the sporting goods place. The bike shop will put in a new tube, but they don't currently have any with sealant already inside. So, I get a bottle of sealant, along with a floor pump for a Presta vale tube. I left the tool I have to remove tube valves at home, so i get one of those as well. I purchase all this and figure out how to haul it with me. I walk back to the train station where I grab a mall shuttle. Down the wall, a homeless woman standing near the door begins to rant before I get out at a lunch place. It's closed for some reason, in spite of the sign which lets me know it's "open 7 days a week." Across the street is another place. I order a salad and eat half before I'm off to the train with all my stuff. The train takes me to the station where I catch a bus the rest of the way to work. When I get there, I attempt to cut through the label on the bottle of slime, to remove a tube with which to apply sealant inside the newly installed tube. Somehow, the simple scissors cuts a hole in the bottle. When I try to squeeze sealant into the tube, it shoots out of the hole and onto myself and the floor. I don't know if I got any inside the tube. The tiny tool to remove the valve does not appear to remove anything. And I discover, by myself, for the first time...that a Presta valve must me opened to take air in (and i assume sealant) and closed after being filled. Perhaps this is why my hand pump didn't work several days ago. I fill the tire, clean up the mess, lock up the store, and go home. I will have to call the bike shop tomorrow to ask if a Presta valve 1) can be removed and 2) must be removed to apply sealant. I suppose I could look it up online. I could have done so at work...
Monday. I'm on the way to work. Turning onto the street with the open field, I spy the same vehicles and trailers. The flatbed trailer no longer has junk upon it. It has a couple of small extensions which drop down at its back end, for each of the front tires on a small car parked on top of them. In the bed of the trailer is now a camper shell. I'm approaching an underpass half way between the connecting trail and the end of this one. It's a place where, last month, I was on my way home. I knew that ice was underneath new snow right here, and in spite of this I ended up on top of it and then immediately on the ground. Yesterday afternoon I was coming home past here on a rare Sunday. Some ten teenagers were standing on the trail and the grass, some with skateboards. On this chilly morning, I'm through the underpass and climbing the ramp to the rest of the trail. At the top, walking the same direction, is who appears to be a young homeless guy. He's bundled up head to toe in black. Yet he appears different. His gear does not appear to be mismatched, he's not in a coat which is open (as I so often see homeless wear their coats on chilly days), and he walks with a certain stature. When I get to work, indeed I do get a hold of a tech person in the cycling department where I got my flat changed. They verify that I do indeed need to remove the valve core from the tube, and not simply loosen the stem cap, before I put sealant into the tube. Last night, when I got home, I did look it up online. I saw nothing about removing the core from a Presta valve, only videos about completely removing the stem cap and letting the stem recede toward the inside.
Wednesday. I step outside work to throw out some trash. Our parking lot has a few spaces which are landscaped with stones and hedges. One is in front of a nail shop a few doors down. I watch the owner, a Korean woman, rearrange some tones and add some square tiles to make a small box-shaped structure. Ii ask her what it is. She says, "Rabbit house, for the rabbit." Saturday. During this week's daily commute and back along the bike trail, I've passed a handful of individual homeless strolling along. This isn't unusual as of late. The second half of the week has been host to subzero temperatures. One guy had his arms full of blankets he was carrying. This morning, I'm approaching an underpass. The street above is the one I walked along when I exited the trail with a flat tire. This morning, it's 4 degrees F. I watch as a woman wearing a knit cap and a red sleeping bag is walking along this bridge over the trail, talking to herself. The following day is St. Valentine's Day, I decide to take my bike back to the sporting goods super center from which I purchased it, shortly before Christmas. In spite of the fact that it's zero degrees F. Since I got it, the chain has been skipping, but it's gotten worse. I'm approaching a favorite diner when my water bottle begins to slip out of a pouch on the handlebars before I put it back. When I arrive at the diner, I don't even notice that it's gone. It fell out and hit somewhere in the dusting of snow which fell overnight., and i never heard it hit the street. Seating is tight, but I finagle a seat at the counter. There's a couple next to me, and the guy is in a jacket with a black and white thin blue line flag on the back. This place has sold T-shirts for some time. I ask if any are available. "Yes," I'm told, "but they're available for cash only." (?) I don't have cash. I'm soon on the train and headed north to downtown. Along the tracks, I spot a camper, a van, and a tent. They're in a line along the tracks, in a transit system train yard. Then I'm off the train, over the steps to the bridge over the train tracks, and down on the street. A group walks down the sidewalk...complete with a guy in shorts. I was wondering how soon such a...guy would make an appearance. It's like a streaker in the 1970s. Sooner or later, a guy with shorts shows up in this town during the winter. At the sporting goods super store cycle shop, I'm told that a tech will have to look at my bike...later. They are all but one working on skis and snowboards. (I wonder if they're wearing shorts?) And by the way, I'm told that the chain is skipping because I'm riding with the high gears all the way up, or the low gears all the way down. Which is the point of having gears. Except I'm told this is beside the point. For 50 years, I've been misusing bicycles. Nothing surprises me anymore..
3 Bikes vs. "Profane Word"
Tuesday. With my new bike in the shop, I'm off to work on the bike I previously rode to and fro work. I turn a corner I take every morning along the way to work. It's an intersection of two residential streets. It feels as though I ride over a stone, and that a big piece is now stuck in my tire. When I dismount to see what it is, I spot a screw which has punctured my tire so deeply, the quarter-inch head is flush with the tire surface.. A ring of sealant surrounds the screw head. I have perhaps, sixty seconds of air left? The good news is I'm not far from home. But I'm only halfway there before the tire is flat. When I arrive, I change bikes, and I'm off on my last remaining bike. My only hope of making it to the gym before work is the train. I usually go to the gym on Mondays, but I was called into work early yesterday. It isn't far to the station. On the train platform is a transit system security officer, just hanging out. Along comes a homeless guy on his bike. He strikes me as somewhat familiar. His ears are covered with big headphones. He has a bag of bread pieces, which he throws at seagulls on the tracks. When he steps out onto the tracks, the officer attempts to tell him he can't do that. This guy empties his bag of bread pieces, steps back onto the platform, and gets back on his bike; completely ignoring her the entire time. And he's off, out of the station. I could always swing by the metaphysically ideological bike shop on the way home for a new tube, but I don't need another militant cycling lecture, and a department store tube will do just fine. At work, I call a couple of department stores between there and home. Only one tells me that they have a tube in stock for my bike. When I get there after work, the size I need ain't on the shelf. I consult customer service. I speak with three people, one of whom goes in the stock room and brings out a tube with a Presta valve. The bike with the flat uses standard valves. He tells me that the system shows four of the kind of tubes I need on the shelf, but they ain't on the shelf. I wonder if I can order one. I opt to ask a manager this time. A girl with green hair checks online, and discovers bike tubes which she can have in the store in two hours. If I find one I need, I can pick one up tomorrow. I give her a brief education in bike tubes, and we find what I need. What a day...and it ain't over yet. When I get home, I discover an email from the department store. The tube I want is out of stock. Calls to the department store go unanswered. I make three fruitless calls to the department store's customer service number. They tell me that I may order a tube to be delivered to my home in three days, but I can't have it delivered to the store. I can get a new tube before then. I tell the last customer service employee, who is working from home and can't connect me with any supervisor, that I am done fucking around with this store. He replies that he can't "record profane word, sir."
I recall when a department store was a place where a dad or a kid could pick up basic bike parts. Today's department store is an entirely different store. On Wednesday I'm on my way to work, like yesterday on my third bike. Along the way, the shifters are giving me all kinds of unfamiliar fits. I stop by the department store and run into the manager from last night. She confirms the tube I want is out of stock. She then suggests that Target is not a place I want to come and purchase stuff for a bicycle. Though they sell bicycles. There's something about this final sentence which strikes me as the oddest of the past 12 hours. I massage the gears on my bike all the way to work. When I get there, I call the department store to speak with the store manager. I get a hold of someone in administration. She tells me that the warehouse which is out of stock is in Texas, where a major snow/ice storm is happening at the moment. She proceeds to tell me about her own travails, with delivery trucks losing merchandise to damage and to theft. It's more than I believe I should be privy to as a customer. But I am to discover that this experience is all part of a sojourn of sorts. Later on this evening, I will discover that it's better that I didn't order the department store's random tube. At work, I ponder leaving this ailing bicycle there and going to pick up my now repaired new bike. It hits me, I can still ride this hobbled bike along to the sporting goods super center, leave it there to be looked at, and ride my new bike home. I decide to go for it. Even as I watch snow flurries gently drift in. After we close, I'm out on the trail. This bike has stopped misbehaving this evening. I exit the trail where I believe residential streets will expedite me to the train station.
Parking and Barking
I arrive there just in time to catch the next train. As soon as I board, it's only myself and a seated passenger in the train car. He's in a black leather jacket with white shoulders. I can hear him crying on his phone. "I can't do it," he repeats. "I can't do it. She won't see me. Fuck it." He hangs up. I exit at a transfer point to a train which will take me to the north end of downtown, and a short hike to the super center. On this other train is a young couple. The female has her head in her hand. She glances at me with piercing green eyes. The guy has a man bun and a bandana around his head. When I get to the super center, I'm in front of another parade of customers dropping off and picking up skis for repair. A female tech takes a look at my beleaguered bike and gives me an extremely reasonable estimate for a complete tune up. Which it's never had. The bolt connecting the back rack to the frame has come loose again, and she tells me she will replace it now, because she says it will otherwise fall through the cracks. She thinks like me. She's the first bike shop employee to ask me what I use this old bike for. A young guy dropping off skis says he didn't realize this shop also repairs bicycles. We are surrounded by bicycles and bicycle products. In a half hour, she finishes her preliminary inspection and completes my work order. I ask her for a new tube as well. She queries me about some sizes, and I learn that I need some numbers before I can purchase an adequately sized tube. I transfer Velcro pouches and a seat cover and secure my bag to the back rack of the new bike. I'm out onto the trail, which begins here at a split between one trail which would take me to a neighborhood where I used to live, and the other which will take me home. I like riding my other bikes. But this new one eats trail for breakfast. With snow slowly accumulating, I watch for patches of ice through safety glasses, which keep the falling snow out of my eyes. I ride all the way home at speeds close to those on dry pavement. I'm home is fifty minutes, the standard trip home from downtown. In my parking lot is a small vehicle with the back license plate hanging crooked by a single bolt. I'm coming along the sidewalk toward the entrance to the lot. The window comes down on the passenger side, and the driver barks at me, "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!" I ignore him. I take my bike inside and come back out to check the mail. The vehicle is pulling out onto my street. The window is still down in the falling snow. The pair of guys inside appear as if they may be homeless. I wonder if the car is stolen. I see it turning into a gas station, perhaps for more parking...and more barking.
Friday. Okay. I have my new bike back. And I'm taking the advice which a couple of different techs from the sporting goods super center gave me. For all my life, I've been riding in the lowest and highest gears most of the time, during relative flat grade cycling. I've been advised...for the first time...to ride in the middle gears. So I'm trying it their way. So far, so good. After work, I'm across the street and rolling through the old money neighborhood. The sun is staying up later as we approach the Spring. There's an orange glow this late afternoon, and the temps rose during the day into the forties. More people are staying out later to enjoy the light. A woman walks her dog coming up the street. I move to the left side, but an SUV pulls out and turns toward me. It stops and the driver speaks to the woman. As I maneuver between the two, I hear the woman ask the driver, "Are you (and the family) going to dinner?" Just around the bend, the sun approaches the Rockies. It's one of those idyllic moments and feels warm and nostalgic. Perhaps an hour later, toward twilight, I'm approaching the last golf course along the trail on my way home. On a street just south of there, I recognize a homeless RV camper cruising slowly up the street.
...turbines expelled unregulated exhaust into the air...giving...a jaundiced cloak of sickly-sweet pollution. ...I may have well been in a grave. ...someone would cough...or pull on a cigarette that illuminated his face in a small orange circle of light. ...thinking that I was hallucinating from fatigue and fear... Who were these people? Refugees with nowhere to go but this trash-filled highway? Were there people there? Or just...ghosts...doomed to slog along in the afterlife toward the city? ...I tripped over something dead...breaking it open in a sigh of releasing gases. It was probably a dog or goat...but...I was sure it was a dead child, with her eyes open, reaching out in the gloom to grab my leg and beg for deliverance. - Campbell
Sunday. One of my two relief bikes is ready to pick up from the bike shop in the sporting goods super center. Also, I need some odds and ends from the supermarket downtown. In the morning, I finally remove the valve core from the tube of my new bike, the tube without sealant. I use a tool designed for this. It works like a charm. The sealant goes in after a couple attempts. And the product sealed the hole in its own bottle. I load up the accessories for the bike and grab a bus to a transfer station up the street. During the last days of the company where I worked for almost a decade under the original owner, I used to catch this earliest bus. It came before 4 AM, and I would take it to this transfer station. This was some seven years past now, and the desperate souls trying to transfer to a downtown bus from this one, so damned early in the morning, were tenuously hoping all the cylinders would fire and they would somehow make a particular train on time. It didn't always work this way, and at times turned out comical for everyone...except them. Least of all them. How much can change in seven years. This late Sunday morning, a passenger stands at the street corner of the station. He wanders over to me and asks which bus I'm waiting for. I don't smell any alcohol but his speech sounds as if it's dragging. I mention the number fifteen. He points to the sixteen parked on a layover and tells me, "That's it there. It will come around this way." I know. When it in facts pulls around the block, he steps aboard behind me. He tells the driver he went to get a bus pass but "the place was closed." He shows her some kind of unfolded document which entitles him to a monthly bus pass. They don't come cheap these days, more than $100 per month. I've never seen paperwork for a complimentary bus pass, nor would I have considered using it as a substitute for such a pass. This satisfies the driver. As he makes his way down the aisle, the driver gets going. he appears to lose his balance. "Woah slow down," he quietly says.
Before I make my way back again to the sporting goods super center, a journey which I have been making a habit, I decide to grab lunch upon the good old pedestrian mall. Pedestrian traffic is making a post-pandemic comeback. I stop into a place which I thought was another long time bar and grill, where my brother once worked. Was that 30 years ago? I've been here before much more recently, but I don't remember this menu. I order what turns out to be some kind of gourmet salmon and mashed yam plate. Together with a soda, it all ends up being $36. Inside is a cutout of John Wayne with a mask placed over his face. I'm out on the patio. It's only in the 40s, but feels like a nice late winter day. The sun is out and I'm under a heat lamp. After I order, from several doors down the mall comes sounds of a scuffle. I hear someone say, "Get...out...of...my...DOORWAY." The voice sounds sober. Is it the owner of the business? I see a couple of homeless types, one with his arms around the other. The former i passed on along the way here. He has shoulder-length salt and pepper hair, a black leather jacket and black shorts over black tights. He was playing air guitar for the passersby. By the time lunch is served he's attracted the attention of onlookers, and then the police. While I'm eating, he's in handcuffs and headed for a police car. I don't notice anyone else arrested. After lunch, I'm headed for a confection shop, for a truffle for dessert. On a corner, a young guy, a kid really, asks me if I like acid. I grab my truffle and am shortly at the bike shop. The bike is clean and ready to go. I'm off to the supermarket, and I'm in and out. I picked up a snack and eat it at a bus stop outside. Another young guy comes along. This one has a shopping cart full of stuff. He asks me if I "want (to buy) an Xbox?" It's not a long ride home. No more shifter problems. Off the trail and climbing a steep hill, I pass a Caucasian guy Spandexed out in black. He's racing down the hill on his ten speed, with a single saddle bag on his front rim. I'm crossing the intersection over to my corner. The new Vietnamese grocery is open for business. It appears to be opening day. There is unusual honking in front of the entrance to their small parking lot, right next to my townhome complex. I'm just past the grocery when I hear a small car hit the back of a big pickup truck. The car lost its front bumper. I wonder if this is how traffic will be from now on? I decide to try the old Mexican place, now the new Mexican fish place, for dinner. A female comes inside behind me. She's carrying a big bible. It appears bound in coffee-colored leather. What she mentions is unintelligible, something about the number of customers in the place. She salutes and walks out.
Tuesday. The temperatures will end up climbing into the 60s F today. I'm on the way to work, just off the bike trail. I've slogged up the top of a hill in a sleepy neighborhood. It's warm enough to take off my jacket, my balaclava, and my gloves. First, I must take off the small shoulder bag over my shoulder and set it down off to the side of the lane. In it i carry my wallet, keys, a couple of cameras, a small flashlight, and my phone. Then I must figure out where to put the items I just took off. I bundle everything in the jacket and tie the arms through the handles of the bag on the back rack. Five women on cycles turn the corner and go shooting down the hill. Then I'm off once again. In no time, I'm at work. I change into jeans and a buttoned down shirt and prepare to head out for a diet soda. Where did I put down my shoulder bag? Did my coworker take it with her when she departed minutes ago? Or is it...oh no. Oh no. This can't be happening. It's back at the side of the lane. Fortunately, the shoe guy is here today. We take his car and wind our way along a couple boulevards and into the path I take through neighborhoods where he's never been. When we reach the corner, there it is. The following day, the thing I forget to bring this time is my lunch. It's something of less of a crisis than yesterday's. There is snow in the forecast for later in the afternoon. I actually make it home just before the big flakes come down. Just before I cross my corner, I pass a couple of cyclists headed the other way down the street. One greets me with a "Hi." They are Jehovah's Witnesses, from the apartments across the street from where I live. In the dark I can't be sure if their winter coats are unzipped and i see their name tags, or their tags are on their coats. One greets me with a "Hi." They're on my side of the street, and I'm on the right side, both literally and figuratively. I respond with, "You're on the wrong side, dude." They don't appear to have headlamps. And why are they heading out just when the snow is going to get worse?
Friday. Yesterday, I woke to streets covered with snow in various states of having frozen into ice, or melting, or plowed into ruts by vehicle tires. I elected to avoid the trail, but a normally twenty-minute ride to the train station took forty-five. A guy on the platform offered me two "train tickets"(who knows what those are, and never mind everyone on the platform is supposed to be in possession of proof of fare) in exchange for two cigarettes. He didn't appear to expect me to tell him that I don't smoke. He was wearing his hoodie draped sideways on top of his head. On the way home after work, the second high gear on my new bike would not shift down. It did the same thing earlier this week. I suspected it was frozen, but worried I may be right back again at the bike shop this Sunday. On this morning however, it's shifting again. I'm approaching the top of the hill, just off the trail on the way to work, where I left my shoulder bag earlier this week. The sun is out and the air is chilly. A gust comes up and blows a cloud of snow crystals off the branches of a fir tree. It washes past my face. This February has escaped the fate of this same month last year, and it's disaster of streets mottled with snow which refused to melt. The following month of last year was the same. We can only wait and see what the following month of this year brings. This has been a month when the sun is beginning to set later in the evening, casting late winter shadows and a sky just starting to turn orange. Yesterday I saw kids out in their yards, parents stopped in the street watching them, dogs on leashes as I rolled through the old money neighborhood, just out of work. It prompts me this afternoon to survey these colonial and plantation-like homes, their gazebos and back yard semi-covered decks. Five-foot ceramic pots frame a front door, or stand at the end of a front porch. Is this an example of some kind of class structure? Signs of success. On this late afternoon, a father helps his three sons build a sculpted snow wall around a tree trunk. When was the last time I saw anything like that? He's ten or twenty years my junior.
Saturday. Another shift, another week, and another month appears to be finished. They are all flying past. I'm on my way home after work, in the middle of the afternoon. I'm at one end of a bridge on a trail characterized of late by residents of homes along the way walking dogs, and of the occasional high school kids or wandering homeless. I'm stopped waiting for two women and a guy in a mystical-looking poncho. They are slowly walking across the bridge, headed my direction. They walk on this trail abreast of each other. The woman in the middle is talking about the "energy" of another. The following day, I just don't feel like dealing with whatever leftover snow and ice may be on the streets between home and downtown, where I'm off to enjoy a lunch with a book. i wait at the old bus stop across the street, and I watch a couple of guy on bikes cross the middle of the boulevard. One of them goes to the drive through window at the liquor store. He lays his bike down in front of the window instead of leaning it against a wall or fence. I wonder why he doesn't go inside? He's afraid of his bike being stolen. He's handed a tall can of something which he puts into his jacket. The other cyclist is recognized by a homeless guy. I'm no longer among the street folk on a regular basis. I only run into those camping alongside and wandering the bike trail. At the train station where I transfer buses, one guy in the shelter is telling another about being awake at 2 AM and "buzzed as fuck." I'm in and out of Chilis on the pedestrian mall for lunch. When I come out, I'm putting warm headgear back on when a homeless guy hauling a sleeping bag comes along and asks me for a dollar. Jesus, he looks to be in his twenties, and he's physical health appears to be on the wane. Then it's onto another bus to a particular supermarket chain for some odds and ends, before I take a train to the next station to catch a bus back home.
I spotted a straight-backed wooden chair on the very edge of a fourth-story apartment whose walls had been blown out... That same chair had been there two years ago, on the same precipice, the same featureless picture teetering on the wall behind it. Both times I felt the urge to climb up there and explore, to maybe kick the chair off into the void. This time, I didn't want to disturb the disquieting scene portrayed, one of everyday life violently interrupted. I wondered if whoever last sat in that chair was dead. - Campbell
