The Lost Pedestrian

I found this unpublished post in my Drafts folder on WordPress.

My ghost surprised me with a Valentine’s Day text today. I do not really know what to make of it. I could have responded with something like “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be ghost? I thought that ghosts were above this sort of thing.”

Maybe there should there should be a separate Ghost Valentine’s Day. Which could be observed by the ghosts and the ghosted. I would send my ghost an empty heart shaped box of chocolates.

Or perhaps a dozen dead roses.

Picked from a dozen dead forests.

But I wish I knew what this was all about. Her brief reappearance. It was almost as if she knew that she had almost vanished from my consciousness. And perhaps she needed some sort of validation that she still existed.

Or perhaps I was just one of many recipients in a mass text to her “menagerie of men” as she was mentioned. First I thought it was needlessly cruel of her to mention… letting me know that I am not as special as I thought. But eventually I came around to thinking that it would have been needlessly cruel of her to not inform me of my non-specialness.

It was something that I needed to hear.

And it made total sense why I would then be ghosted. It was not as if I was not forewarned.

Walking Orfeo (Orfie) around the neighborhood reminds me of how strange people can be. Were they always this strange? Are they getting stranger? Am I getting stranger? Could I be any more strange? Maybe I am only a stranger to myself. Maybe not. But that’s not the point I was trying to make.

I just forgot the point I was trying to make.

When I walk Orfie ….

Some dog walking humans I encounter every day avoid eye contact or acknowledgement of my presence, even when I say hi. That makes me feel strange

Some dog walking humans give me dirty looks because when their dogs see Orfie, their dogs get very excited and it looks like the humans are having difficulty controlling them. So I guess it is my fault for inciting their dogs, even when we are across the street. And I guess it is my fault that their dogs were not trained or socialized. Very strange.

We encountered one such human today. We were on the same sidewalk, about 50 feet apart. And I was just going to continue walking past her, but she stopped in her tracks with her collie, blocking the sidewalk. She looked incredulous. It was like a standoff. She just stood there glaring at us, her little collie or whatever it was barking hysterically. It was like a standoff. I yelled out, “My dog is very friendly.” She continued to stand there glaring, blocking the sidewalk with her hysterical collie (or whatever it was). When I realized she was not going to move, I yelled out again, “My dog is friendly … and you are not!” And then we walked in the other direction.

You can see from the photo how mean and aggressive Orfie appears.

And then once in a while, a dog walking human will say hi or stop to ask if our dogs can say hi to each other. Which is nice.

Ant then there is sometimes a mixture. The friendliest dog walking neighbor has a dog named Archie. For some reason, Archie hates Orfie and the neighbor and I can’t have a conversation because Archie is pulling hard on the leash and would probably attack Orfie were he not on a leash.

When I got Orfie, one year ago, I thought having a dog would be a great way to meet my neighbors and instill a sense of community that is lacking. I guess I was too idealistic or delusional … So strange that we have made more enemies than friends.

Sitting at Collectivo, trying not to listen to the guy at the table across from me, blathering away on his cell phone. Loudly. My irritated glance is not enough to get through to him. There’s a certain shamelessness to a person who is not self-conscious about being the only person in crowded public space, blathering loudly on his phone. It makes me wonder how he was raised. Maybe the way he was raised was better than the way I was raised. I arose from my raising with an indelible sense of shame that I can shake every now and then, but which is always there, below the surface, waiting for me.

Not that I want to be that guy. The cell phone guy. Or his ilk. But I could probably benefit from a touch of their shamelessness.

That is but one of the ways I was raised that did not bode well for my future. One among many. There are other ways in which I was not raised.

I was not raised to write this sentence.

I was not raised to have a sharp analytical mind in spite of surface appearances.

I was not raised to overcome doubt.

I was not raised to overcome aging.

I was not raised with a shred of confidence.

I was not raised to be fearless or courageous.

I was not raised to fight back, to defend myself.

I was not raised to be liberated from all of my shortcomings.

I was not raised to be completely liberated from my past.

I was not raised to start conversations.

I was not raised to articulate complete sentences.

I was not raised to be good at raising a puppy.

I was not raised to be erased.

It’s March 6, 2024. And there are too many things that should have happened by now. So many things. Beyond my ability to count. I would not know where or how to begin.

But I hope it’s not too late.

I guess if I had to pick one theme for this blog over the years, that would be the one.

Or maybe the theme of trying to find a theme.

Maybe if I spent less time trying to find a theme, a new theme would emerge. And the days would be pass by less recognizably.

And I would live a life devoid of a theme(s).

Have you ever tried out a persona that wasn’t exactly you, but that you thought would make you a cooler you? And then it turned out that the persona was not as cool as you thought it would be. But you were trapped in it. And you couldn’t shed it. but you refused to cave in and accept that this persona that wasn’t exactly you had become you or you had became it. But maybe it wasn’t. you. Maybe this you was just a set of habits. a closed set of patterns. predictable patterns. that’s all it was.

But the nice thing about habits is that with a little behavioral modification, any habit can be broken.

But where does one begin? the persona originated from somewhere. but where did the other one go? The one before it.

that’s the real question.

Perhaps I should be more specific. That’s one of my bad habits. Vagueness. Lack of specificity because I’m not very good at describing abstraction. I mean, I can do abstract. But describing what I mean is another story.

It was a cold night in February sometime late in the 20th century. I was performing in a show at the local performance art cabaret. Standing in the back of the space. Even further back than the bar, right in front of the cigarette machine. I think that is what they called them back then. You know, vending machines for cigarettes. Everybody smoked except me.

I think it was a Tuesday. Even though I knew most of the audience and the participating artists and many of them were considered to be friends at that time … maybe I didn’t feel cool enough to be there. You know, as the only non-smoker. It may have been around 10:20pm. That was the moment I decided to adopt that other persona. The only way to counter feeling like an outsider amongst outsiders was to be more of an outsider than they were.

Which was not the best idea because that’s when the door closed. And I couldn’t get back inside. And it was freezing out there. Outside. And it was even more freezing because I was outside of being outside. I was in a place where no one could find me. Even though they were inches away. They didn’t realize I had abandoned the persona who was standing in front of the cigarette machine, and not smoking.

That may have been the problem. You see nobody noticed this new persona. That is, nobody even noticed there was a new persona. The only one who noticed was the old persona. I guess people just assumed that the old persona and the new one were one and the same. But they couldn’t have been more different.

It was not too long after that the old persona began to resent the new persona. It was like the new persona had stolen the old persona’s identity. Nobody could have conceived of such a thing as identity theft back then. But that’s what it was. A primordial form of identity theft.

It’s been difficult to write of late because of this odor permeating my writing space. It’s a gassy odor. Much like a fart. Actually, it IS a fart, but fortunately it is not my own. It is not of me. It is not from me. It’s from this creature now inhabiting my apartment. But I cannot blame him. Because even though he has an exceptional sense of smell, he seems oblivious to this particular smell. He might be the only 1 who is oblivious to it.

I am trying out a new strategy to deal with this. Which is to write my way out of it. If that is what it takes to get myself back to writing, I can call this a blessing. I say ‘thank you’ to my roommate and ‘bless you, too.’

It’s so strange that I now have this roommate and I am surprised about how chatty I’ve become since his arrival. I choose not to accept that he does not understand what I am chatting about. Although he appears to be confused most of the time.

To which I say, better to be confused than to be certain when there is absolutely nothing that is certain. I am learning that more and more each day. I will continue to learn that until someone trains me not to.

Today I was horrified to learn that there is someone out there who reads this blog. This was not supposed to happen. I feel violated. I mean it feels like a violation of my privacy to have words that I have written and posted on a free completely public (unprivate) website actually read by anybody.

All of those posts that are repetitions of previous posts

All of those posts that contain the darkest of dark thoughts

All of those posts that contain the most empty of emptiness thoughts

All of those posts that are repetitions of previous sentences

All of those posts that I do my best to let go of and forget

Even those very rare posts that I am not embarrassed to have written

These things are just words thrown out into the universe that perhaps some internet psychoanalytic archeologist might uncover decades after I depart from this planet.

But if you are alive at the same time I am alive and are reading this… well… that, to me, is troublesome.

Just keep in mind that they are only words. They do not represent a life of a person, an animal, a vegetable or a thing.

This blog is nothing more than a storage bin of words.

And they are not even good words. They are not good representatives of words.

So, if you are reading this, just be aware that you are staring at nothing. And perhaps you might think this is not such a bad thing. And if you do think this is not such a bad thing, I regret to inform you that you are sadly mistaken.

And maybe even forgiven.

What does it say about a person who sits on their glasses, time and time again, always vowing that this time they will have learned to be more careful and diligent?

What does it say about a person who begins to relish the days when they do not sit on their glasses, who thinks that phase of their life, that habit, is all behind them now? What does it tell you when it turns out this is all delusion … ?

Because perhaps they are fated to sit on their glasses. Perhaps it is a metaphor. Perhaps an omen. Maybe a ritual.

Whatever it is, it’s expensive.