Strange paths

(Note to self: look up the word “wroth”)

((Note to reader: This is about a walk and random
corner-store encounter...
it's significance may be elevated beyond discovery))

(((wroth)))

moffed (meaning lowered) brow
or certain picayune discovery
walking from ledge to ledge along the uncertain
delivery of phrases: here’s a block, here’s a house,
herein the home OF A CENTRAL MAROON’S CHEERLEADER
like an advertisement for unwanted? loitering, malingering…

squirrels, their houses clumps of leaves-in-tree, sparring
with the world, saying: skkkkkkkrriiiiiiiittttttt! squeak!
and so forth.

past the old savings & loan to the corner store, where we meet
a florid youth, quite out of his head, acting as if he were on
a high dose of amphetamines, but that’s only how I could understand it,
because I cannot understand it—Tim is clearly insane, says he’s
23, picks up a hair tie off the ground and says, “I could need this,”
and then, “Oh, that’s my hair.” I ask him how he ended up here (says he’s from New York, been here 10 years) and he only replies, “Yes, I wash my hair everyday.”

And “good god, there’s no advantage in it, good gawd, working their asses off, student, worker, good gawd…”

I try to understand him, share a smoke, cut a heater, and he compares me to somebody he knows. A smartass, probably. Either listens and gives his opinion like he doesn’t give a shit, or just stands there, smoking (you know, wistful wafts of smoke out the mouth, like) and doesn’t listen, just seems to, but doesn’t, doesn’t acknowledge.

And that ain’t the worst of it, just hanging around, my friend don’t even have a place, probably just sitting under a bridge a long ways that way toward downtown, not givin’ a shit! Good gawd!”

Hair—bad—day! Understand? Hair—bad—day, Good god, that’s not a good thing. Understand?”

He said most of these things. I observed him, long hair with random too-many hair ties, hair stringy, long, maybe dirty, puffy, he looks like a crazy man up a bridge sheering…

but then he is just himself, a self-acclaimed crazy bum, not a bum but somebody like a bum, bumming for smokes, lights, chastising, elaborating, proclaiming, waiting, spitting, smoking.

He crouches in the parking lot, hawks a good one, and spits.

“That’s my brain.”

I cannot disagree. When I leave he shakes my hand (I don’t like this, but I do it anyway).

“Nice to meet you,” he says. I never tell him my name... just one part of the strangeness.