Vagabond’s Gaze

The rain falls, invisible, against a gray dawn. The sound of a million droplets ringing against jungle leaves beats in time to a tempo only the divine could follow. Bull frogs call out repeatedly, answered only by a litany of birds. In the same fashion that an insect is pawed and pecked from the wet dirt, bonds are broken. Leaves are buried and recycled by the forest floor. In a single day, millions of cycles end and begin a new. Every moment something is replaced naturally by a new face, a new scenery, another love.

The water is deep emerald green with a thin white film floating across the surface. I turn to see her icy blue gaze scanning the shoreline for any unwanted visitors. The bridge could be a half mile or a thousand kilometers away, I can’t tell. Either way, I’m steadfast in my mission to swim the entire distance. My neck burns like a pin cushion stuck with a million flaming needles. The effort required just to hold my head above water for this long is mentally torturous. A buildup of lactic acid creeps into the lower half of my leg as I kick the murky water repeatedly. In a few moments, my muscle seizes like an old hydraulic motor that’s long spent it’s share of fluid. With my right leg useless, I continue swimming lopsidedly and pray that the bridge will somehow gain the strength to draw itself closer to me. If only I could find a place to rest…

The bus rocks back and forth, bouncing nastily over each bump and crevice in the wide, paved road. A myriad of people flow in and out of the doors at every stop. Three women, each one easily a decade past retirement, board at the same time. Two of them are escorting the third who is wheelchair bound. The woman in the wheelchair looks so thin and frail that even a stern breeze would easily blow her away. Despite her dilapidated visual appearance, she babbles and coos wildly, resisting the grasp of her other two companions with an astonishing strength. Even after her wheelchair is secured to the wall of the bus, and we continue hurtling down the street, her spirit shows it’s fierce obstinance behind each cataract and ravine-like wrinkle.

Outside the window, I can see a man and a woman across the street, pitching back and forth wildly on the sidewalk. I can’t tell if both of them are supporting each other in an incurable drunkenness or if the man is preying on some poor inebriated soul. From inside my slowly moving fishbowl I look on, caught between a state of moral ambiguity and observable apathy. “That kind of thing happens all the time here.” Each background conversation blends in a mix of multiple languages, creating an exotic and barbarous chorus. In certain ways, I am overwhelmed by each lurid stimuli. In others, I am intoxicated and pining for the next surprise held in the folds of this wayward and riotous cityscape.

All of this novelty is in someway familiar. A distinct scent, an unexpected arrival; all of these still hold a vertiginous familiarity. Under so many layers, everything in somehow the same. All of these changes exist in an open vacuum. Our novelties can be condensed into marketing terms for twisted toy manufactures who reel in innocent minds with neon signs. The melancholic reality of these environments is only realized in a release of unrealistic expectations. For some, this is just as torturous as a fantastical make-believe realm where our copesetic coexistence is considered mandatory.

A great deal of strange faces pass by in a transient fashion. The concoction of various shapes and figures somehow creates a seemingly sedentary hallucination. Writing the truth is a fearful and daunting task and sharing it is a ten-fold nightmare. Each false backing found between plywood walls would open only with an appropriately directed shove. As the trees sway and the breeze breathes new life, we begin to realize each new perspective is a Dunning-Kruger fallacy from the previous.