Artwork © Richard Spisak

Chapter 26

—Are you okay?

—I guess so.

—A jarring experience, I am sure.

—Life?

—No, what happened a minute ago.

—Life.

—You have no immediate inclination to go home, it seems. You don’t want to retreat there.

—Not right away, no.

—Perhaps you still feel stunned. You were, after all, nearly hit by a bus.

—I was and I don’t.

—The sun has gone down and the lull in this tempest won’t last much longer.

—I suppose it won’t.

—And yet you are still seated on this bench at a bus stop. Is there any particular reason for it?

—None.

—But, for everyone, even in actions incentivized by less rational impulses, there are underlying reasons as impetus.

—There are. There is nothing to do, nothing to go home for, nothing that happens in my life.

—The sum of the days is small and granular.

—Nonsensical riddles. That’s so nice. Say what you need to say, but do it plainly and then be done with it.

—Don’t you think that every day is a slight reinvention in metrics that individuals may not see or appreciate fully?

—I see that I am a janitor. I see that a janitor is merely a janitor and stays a janitor to the end of his days. Anyhow, it is another Kona Low weather pattern here in Honolulu, and there is the tendency to be equally low at such times. At least it is that way for me.

—You are exhausted, if not a bit rattled.

—And stultified, but the shift is over. If nothing else, I can be glad for that.

—Amongst other things. You are here, now, in your home country. You have a job that now gives you enough hours so you can pay rent. There are those, you know, who are lured to a foreign country, have their documents confiscated, and spend their lives exploited in nefarious enterprises.

—There are. Is that supposed to make me feel better about my plight to be reminded of theirs?

—Mostly, with human perception created from such contrasts.

—The world’s misery may be divided into larger and smaller portions, but ultimately it is the same misery. I don’t find so much comfort in the fact that life is worse for others.

—Would the thought of being slammed against the front of a bus bring any more comfort?

—I assume so when the excruciating pain has subsided with death. But as I haven’t done it yet, how would I know?

—What you’re feeling, and the attitude you are projecting, is just the residual of emotional resonance.

—I don’t get you.

—It is like sound on an empty bottle, exaggerating significance within. More rains are coming, and if not drenched by them soon, buses will inevitably splash you in their sordid waves from the soon-to-be flooded streets. Your clothes will be wet rags soon and you will be smelling like a decomposing fish.

—It can’t be helped.

—But then perhaps you find it relaxing to watch and listen to the steady rhythm of the rain. Some people do.

—Not really.

—If you dislike being in the rain, why sit out here waiting for it to begin again and in pitch darkness? You must like it.

—Not exactly. But I don’t exactly oppose it. Where there is thirst there is a need to drink and I for one appreciate that which sustains life and satiates such cravings. It would be kind of stupid to think otherwise.

—So you are seated here to welcome the rains.

—Hardly that. I just accept that they will inundate me shortly. It will probably restore the reservoir of water in the volcanic aquifer of O’ahu. But as it does so, contaminants will saturate the flood waters and it all will run off shores, destroying coral reefs in the process. As I said before, misery gets divided. What is favorable for some comes as a detriment to others. But yes, in answer to your question, I like the rain all lachrymose and lugubrious like life itself. A rainy day seems to have an affinity if not an outright sympathy for this tragedy called life. Don’t you think so?… I guess you don’t. Never mind. Stay silent. It seems that you don’t have any opinions unless related directly to me. More times than not you just sit back, asking questions. I guess interrogation allows you to retain invincibility via invisibility.

—Is that so?

—I don’t know it to be so, no, nor anything really, but I think a smart man does gain intimacy by getting the interlocutor to reveal himself while he stays hidden from all petty social interaction and scrutiny. It is a form of dissembling, you know.

—You know, jaywalking in a storm is not the brightest move to make.

—Well, I was numb and dumb from work, so what did you expect? I probably wouldn’t have noticed becoming a flattened welcome mat for a bus all that much. I didn’t notice the bus itself coming toward me. Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad ending had you just allowed events to play out in their natural course.

—It isn’t the only time I have pulled you back from a bus.

—You mean when I first came to Honolulu, lived in that stygian men’s shelter operated by the Institute of Human Services, and got a job cleaning at one of their shelters for homeless families? One of their ex-criminal supervisors had this bizarre idea that I had broken into the storage area when I removed the lock and a mop, and fired me on the spot. I walked miles from Lagoon Street to get back downtown. The whole city was alien to me. America was alien to me then too. Then I got lost in the skyscrapers. I was upset and disoriented.

—And you were nearly hit by a bus.

—IHS nearly committed manslaughter.

—If you choose to look at it that way.

—I do. Anyhow, you are the substance of my thoughts so I am not sure what physical pull you think you exerted in both of these occurrences. What are you, anyway?

—I am yourself in a limited way.

—As what?

—As what is needed.

—As a counterweight?

—Yes to excesses that can upend a life. Call it reflex. Call it conscience, if you like, but a part that acts to keep you in equilibrium and out of danger.

—I don’t know that I like it. I mean, I don’t know that I want one. It seems like a blockage of my free will, my volition. And by intervening when I was clearly meant to die you seem to have sabotaged the confluence of events. You thwarted destiny. Your violation might be more than a venial sin.

—Volition is not caprices any more than a leaf picked up and shredded in the winds of a storm is a leaf.

—That is like saying a bird flying into an airplane is not a bird. I don’t quite buy it.

—Then don’t. Nothing is being sold to you. Whatever you say, I think you know that after two misses with a bus that often a confluence of circumstances and conditions can come together and form a funnel cloud over a man leading to his destruction. I just reduce, but cannot eliminate, these potential occurrences of force majeure. They do at times come together but that does not mean you are destined to fall into the abyss.

—Yes, I must admit that life is rather scary that way. Quite scary, really.

—Don’t you think it’s time to head back home?

—Yes, but it’s raining again, and wet is wet. For now it is like a good friend commiserating with one in his sadness.

—How long will you be out here with your friend?

—I don’t know. When the friend becomes too maudlin, the commiseration seems feigned, the pleasure of being in stormy company becomes cloyed and jaded in the daily pall of clouds, or a combination, and I feel like an insect being drowned in the tap water of a sink, I will go home.

—You are intractable.

—And incorrigible. It’s a bit cold now. Hawaii has so many mesmerizing days… even evenings… where wind caresses one’s face with such strong gentleness and with such a perfect temperature it almost feels like being massaged under the fingertips of a god.

—You sound religious.

—I said almost. God, I miss it. This is just too blizzardy and typhoonic for my taste. But I am out here and without an umbrella, so out here I stay.

—Honolulu is many things but it is hardly cold unless contrasted to balmier days. Maybe the weather isn’t projecting itself on you so much as you are projecting yourself on the weather.

—Does it really matter when weariness and boredom are the summation of my days?

—So you are saying you are unable to find any significance at all to this day.

—That’s right. No, I can’t, nor can you. You say that there is small significance in every day. Right? It’s flagrantly wrong, making this whole conversation moot. Do you see me talking to the great thinkers and movers of the planet in any significant or insignificant way, or am I just sitting here in rain and darkness having a conversation with myself? Do you really want to explore my tedium and find something edifying in it?

—Yes I would. It sounds fascinating.

—It sounds ludicrous. To you there is nothing good or bad beyond the judgments of one’s thoughts. To you, perhaps, a bank robber in believing his actions to be the roles of an esteemed professional makes it such.

—You mentioned a woman and two children, one in a stroller, before the rains began.

—For something to say, I suppose. Nothing came of it. What didn’t happen but could have possibly happened is not a happening.

—It is, you know. It is like fading band waves of a radio station. Reality is such. Cold during the storm, hot after it, happy when thinking of something more painful, sad when lamenting a more pleasant time. Nothing is if you have the wherewithal to withstand it, for it is an impression or perception made from contrasting it to something that happened earlier.

—Like being an ephemeral living entity which centuries later is no more entity than any decomposed molecular structure that living organisms walk upon and plants absorb with bits of water into their roots?

—Exactly, but why are you being so evasive?

—I am not. I am being exact, although the two seem similar.

—The woman?

—I don’t know. I passed this homeless guy and then this pile of defecation, presumably his, on the sidewalk. He shouted something at me when I passed. It was nonsensical or maybe I didn’t hear it well. It was probably the former. Most of the people on the streets are crazy, not that being on the streets for any length of time would not make them such. Anyhow, I was moving forward and ignoring him when something clicked in my head. I sensed that he might attack the baby in the carriage and so I turned toward him and he saw me glowering at him. It was nothing.

—Not nothing. People help each other every day in ways that they aren’t aware of.

—It was another day of insignificant hours. I am just a janitor. My role is perfunctory and robotic. In such tedium one’s thoughts are focused on getting back home to rest and have something to eat. Mindfulness and living in the present moment are excruciating. One lives in the future which is often referred to as hope.

—Is hope such an act of desperation for you?

—For me alone? No. But for everyone, yes. Yet somehow I get through life without even being inebriated. I like sober rational assessments of the people and surroundings I walk through.

—I commend you for your rational prowess.

—You should. Not even by the exchanged molecules of a long kiss (breath and saliva the major agents in mutual seduction, you know). Not that there are so many passionate kisses at my age. Even when I was younger I didn’t seem to have much of a proclivity for addiction, whatever its source.

—There has to be something transformational that you learned or experienced from work today, if only for a second.

—Yes, while vacuuming. How from the windows on the 21st floor of Central Pacific Plaza the mountains can be seen as having residential settlements burrowed into them instead of appearing as small box-shaped blights on the surfaces, and how the ocean seems like a 21-story wall with that same cruise ship perched on top.

—It sounds beautiful.

—It looks beautiful.

—So you experienced the beauty of life?

—For a few seconds.

—Okay, for a few seconds, but a few seconds of knowing how exquisite the beauty of life can be.

—Yes.

Steven David Justin Sills is a writer of five novels, two collections of poetry, and over 25 philosophical essays which are entitled “Moral Quandaries of the Libertine.” Audio samples of his works can be found here.

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.

Chapter Guide

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty- One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter 25