The Lost Pedestrian

a friend may be slowly dying. and by “slowly,” i mean more quickly than the dying that begins when we were born. it’s pretty devastating to see it happen and to not be able to do anything about it. it’s sad that i can’t transcend my sadness to truly be there to do something.

i visited her in the hospital the other night. she was there and not there at the same time, but i couldn’t tell where she was and when. even when she was there, i could not find her. maybe my sadness was creating a wall. a wall that i could not penetrate. maybe i was more there for her than i thought. it’s impossible to tell.

i am counting on seeing her again.

i don’t want to say goodbye.

and i don’t want to arrive too late.

since seeing her, my sadness has become this weight i carry around with me. i don’t understand why it feels so depleting. why i am walking around in a daze. a dulled dulling daze. to quote dylan again, “it doesn’t matter where i go anymore, i just go.”

7 years have passed since my bicycle crash, 7 years and 13 hours since my fall from grace. sometimes i feel time collapsing all around me. the steady propulsion of time slowly erasing me. but everyone knows summer is the season for erasure since this is the season when time obliterates everything. present company excluded.

and then people look at me like i’m crazy when i tell them i am a winter person. if i mention it, they sometimes say, “yes, we already know that about you.” But i can’t recall ever saying that to anyone. not even you. except maybe once.

how strange this is. this delusion that i can control things. that i am in control. that i can read into things that can’t be read. whatever could have spawned that notion in my head? i am trying and trying to figure it out. it’s almost as if i can convince myself that I can control figuring it out. i wish i could. but i can’t. can i?

i think you saw me on the train. but i may not have seen you. i was either looking down or out the window. down and out. for quite a while. a long time. when i got off the train i was not aware that you were trying not to appear as if you were following me, even though we were both headed in the same direction, to the same intersection, at the same building, on the same floor, in the same room.

finally, we sat in this room, across from each other, seated on a chair and a couch. but shortly before that, during that moment when you were possibly trying not to appear as if you were following me, i texted you to tell you that my train was running a few minutes late, and that i could arrive no sooner than my train. so it was rather confusing to me that the first sentence uttered from your mouth was an apology for your tardiness. i said that it seems really strange that you are apologizing when it was I who was late, as if you were responsible for my lateness. but it’s possible you never received my text. and it’s possible you did receive it, but did not read it. or it’s possible that you read it, but could not decipher it. or it was possible that you read it and deciphered it, but it felt so much easier to pretend as if you had not read it because then we might have other things to talk about, beyond this.

i know you were trying your hardest to appear as if you could make sense of the situation. when i asked why you felt the need to apologize, you said you just did it by habit. not instinct. not intuition. by habit, and nothing else.

i said, but i was the one who was late. you said you felt responsible for my lateness. i said, i think you already said that already. you said, no, but you think i inferred it.

i said that it was actually my responsibility because if i had not made myself seen by you on the train, you would not have felt it was important or necessary for you to appear as if you were not following me. if i were on a different train, you may have arrived on time.

but then we might not have anything to talk about.

under the cloud of an all-pervasive sadness. all of my attempts to conceal it feel fraudulent to me. but there is no sense in showing it and no sense in hiding it. no matter what, the sadness just gets heavier and thicker and unwieldy’er and heavier. i don’t have the strength to carry it around. and it is not specific or directed towards anyone or anything. it’s just there. i don’t think people really notice. except maybe i do not come across as a very friendly person. which makes me sadder.

today i tried to evade the sadness by swimming laps. i started out fine, but gradually my felt heavier and heavier. the water began to feel like jello, and then sand, and then mud. and i swam and i swam as long as i could go. i am not sure what kept us afloat, me and my body.

and when i emerged from the pool, i felt this sense of buoyancy and upliftedness. and i felt this renewed strength which has enabled me to finish this sentence.

have you ever noticed this timeless spaceless feeling you get when you are traveling in a plane or a train, half-asleep with your eyes 3/4 closed, and you hear the faint murmur of voices of the people around you,  and it somehow feels comforting. and you think while you are half dreaming a thought that says, “i wonder if this is what death must be like. well not actually the dying kind of death…  but maybe this is what it feels like to be in the afterlife… to  be a soul without a body. if it is, it’s not really all that bad.” has anyone else noticed this?

i was at this stop sign today, in my car. I was in the driver’s seat. With the window rolled down. On Western Avenue. I heard a voice. It was coming from the black SUV on my left. This very chipper looking guy with a beard and sunglasses yells out. “Hey, don’t we know each other?” It was so loud on Western Avenue that I could not hear him. I said, “what?!” And he said, “I feel like we know each other.” I said, “I guess it’s possible.” He said I looked like someone he knew, or maybe he said I looked someone he would know… could know.

But I could not place him. He looked like so many people. The beard. The shades. The SUV. I probably looked the same, except for the beard, the shades, the SUV.

We were both men who were white driving black cars on Western Avenue.

He asked me how my day was going. I said I was not sure because my day had not yet begun. He said, “So this must be a dream, right?” I said he might be right but this did not feel very dream-like.

And then I added, “Actually, I’m not really sure what I meant by that. How is your day going?”

“Great!” he said. And I knew he meant it. It was infectious.

the light was so glaring earlier tonight when I exited the shroud of the building where i work. it was difficult to focus. then i realized that maybe it wasn’t the sun. maybe i just have this new innate ability to see auras. auras everywhere. some people wear them more loudly than others. but even the darkest of auras … i have this sensitivity to all of them. there must be a word for this kind of sensitivity. it’s not light sensitivity. well, it is and it isn’t. i can feel an aura approaching behind me, walking below me. up in the skyway.