This is a beautiful little moment that happened this morning. It's something that I don't think I will ever forget:
Late last night, my girlfriend, Ashley, and I left LA to visit San Francisco for the weekend. This morning, at a Starbucks in the bay, I had the chance to meet a very interesting artist, and I was lucky enough to take away a few choice words of wisdom from him.
We met in the restroom. Looking back now, I don’t know that I’d call it a meeting really; I knocked on the bathroom door, and when I heard no reply, I cracked it open to find a homeless man shaking as he sat fully-clothed in layers of jackets on the toilet. His elbows rested on his knees as he slouched on the seat, and he held his face between his palms. He wasn’t doing anything bad in the restroom; he didn’t seem to be doing any drugs, and there was no smell of alcohol – it looked like he was just trying to calm himself down. Still, he shook like he was having a seizure, and it was hard to ignore.
“Sorry about that, man.”
I ordered my coffee and found a seat with my laptop. Ashley and I had arrived in the city way too early to check into our hotel, and we had stopped at this Starbucks to go online and find something exciting to do. The man came out of the restroom with a small blue book held tight under his arm like a newspaper. Muttering to himself, the man slammed the book down on the table beside me and proceeded to circle his spot a few times, shuffling and grumbling, before he finally took his seat. Of the many empty chairs, the muttering man chose the one right behind me, the one that made us sit so uncomfortably close that our shoulders were nearly touching in an otherwise empty cafe. Perhaps he recognized me as the guy who interrupted his privacy a few minutes before in the restroom and he wanted to repay the favor.
We sat silent like that for a few good, long minutes. Then, when, from under his breath, the muttering started up again, an impulse somewhere between curiosity and discomfort made me turn around to take a better look at the man. From behind his shoulder, to my surprise, I saw that his little blue book was actually a notebook that was filled with loose pages of beautifully hand-written notes and poems. Listening more carefully, I suddenly realized that his stream of speech had really been recitation the entire time. This was not just a delusional homeless man – he was a delusional homeless poet. Perhaps sensing that I was beginning to understand him, he turned to me with a look of sincere desperation and asked me for my opinion on something he was obviously struggling with.
“Is it ever alright to say that? I mean, he just said ‘bitch.’ Who goes around saying? I mean. I’m just trying to.” He stopped short and stared ahead. His arms trembled in front of him as he failed to control them enough to talk with his hands. Though I never felt threatened, his tone tottered on the brink between frustration and anger as he pointed down at his notes – I couldn’t read it, but I assumed it used the language in question.
“Are you asking if it’s okay for people to call each other that?”
“Yea, ya’know. Yea… It’s like you spend your entire life." He paused and looked around the cafe, "I just want to accommodate all the people around you. You know? Because we’re all here… It’s not okay to be bad to each other.” I could see him beginning to tear up. He still did a bad job of talking with his hands, but his shaking was considerably less now, and I could see a vehemence in him that wasn’t present before.
“You are absolutely right.” I agreed, “We are here for each other. I am here for you.”
“I am here for you.” He whispered almost with a sigh of relief. And with that he turned back around and stared out the window until Ashley and I left.
No comments:
Post a Comment