Nameless

Earlier than 7/25/2001

Walking in the rain on the glossy pavement listening to the raindrops pattering, draining into dark sewer drains. The dead leaves well up around grates, the waters back up. The gray sky overhead is continual, endless, calling out to no one. On and on I walk. Overhead the straight line of a telephone pole rises out of a chaotic random jumble of tree limbs and branches that are leafless in early December. Cars in the distance flash by with a hiss in a streak of light. They are far away and nothing comes near, nor approaches, nor fades away. There is just the night and the glow of the nearby city reflecting in an ugly brown color on the clouds that are hundreds of feet thick. Nothing comes in or out of them. My footsteps fade in silence, the constant trickle of water flowing. Damp moist dark lawns of people who I used to greet on the sunny summer afternoons are empty. Where are they now? Not even a trace of light comes from within their houses, their homes as quiet and empty as the night. Was it really so late? I did not notice. I walked on, wondering how far I could walk without thinking. The puddles along the curbs glittered with the stray light of the streetlights reflecting recursively off of every wet surface, so many mirror-like surfaces. The light eventually dispersed into the opaqueness of the air thick with moisture. Do you know that air which contains moisture, water, is less dense than dry air? What that means is that moisture laden air rises and rises until it cools, then the water condenses and falls back upon the wetness. I had walked long enough to begin to feel the wetness of my hair. My coat grew heavy. I did not care. I turned up the alley. Wires ran in soggy arcs from pole to lifeless pole. The asphalt below me lay black and hard, shadows mingled with themselves there. I walked along a wall, a straight wall that I would never see beyond, never cared to see beyond, I wasn’t even aware of anything but the wall leading me on like a passage in a maze. I did not follow it rather it ran alongside me isolating me in the silence. My shadow grew long in front of me, then, as I approached a street light, my shadow began to diminish. It went that way for blocks, I noticed only my shadow waxing and waning beneath my feet. I did not want to count the number of times, but at least I knew that time was passing that way. I was in the midst of monotony, swimming in the deadness of not-thinking. Stimuli were gentle, undemanding; the rain, the stillness, the soft glow. I could feel my breath condensing upon each exhalation. Beyond me, far away, people were living their lives, but I was walking the streets, the alleys, trying to outpace myself. Could I walk away from myself? No, but I could distance myself from thought, as if it was smoke rolling out of the exhaust stack of a hundred year old steam locomotive pushing through the weight of the blackness of night in the still virgin and majestic forests it was helping to destroy. The alley was devoid of trees. The odors of trash lingered. Then it came, the memory of conversation.

”…It’s a dysfunctional community.“

“I’ve never known a community that wasn’t”

“I know one, The Nez Perce in Washington State had a functional community, at least until the US Calvary came and gunned them down, and beat their children’s heads in with the butts of rifles.”

“what?…”, She did not know that I was still angry about something I’d read.

I walked on. There is a peace in the Bleakness, in the nothingness. Nothing is required of you, you are not good, you are not evil, wise nor foolish, right nor wrong. You are nameless, and unspoken of.