Warmth, part 2
Tim sat crisscrossed on the ground, looking around, as if he somehow misplaced himself.
The high-noon sunlight beamed down. His eyes squinting, he accepted whatever people freely gave.
A soft-bodied, slow-moving woman dropped some loose change from her coin purse into a water bottle that had been cut in half.
“Thank you, ma’am.” Tim’s eyes met hers.
She quickly looked away from him. Upon a glance back, he nodded his head softly to recognize her curiosity again. She clutched her bag and shuffled her feet to walk faster. Tim grabbed the cup as if to return the change toward her, but he noticed someone approach his personal bubble.
A tall, young kid hesitated, and once Tim set his bottle down, the kid placed a BOGO coupon for a fast-food restaurant with a soft shrug to say sorry, it’s all I got.
Tim understood. “Thanks, man.”
It didn’t matter that he didn’t eat junk food or any food from grocery stores. No one knew Tim. No one knew his story. Assumptions and perceptions were sufficient. They see him begging. They see him as destitute. What else could they guess or care to know in the short time they pass by.
Tim honored his sign, anything helps.
Wild blueberries rested like weathered raisins in his shirt pocket, shielded from the sun alas. Street jerky sweated in his folded-up handkerchief. He drank directly from whichever restaurant bathroom sink didn’t require a code. For vitamin C, he grabbed oranges from the same tree he’s known for decades. It didn’t matter if the land surrounding the orange tree had changed. He didn’t care for the trouble inside the house which now, technically, owned the tree and its oranges, as this five-foot-nothing trouble yelled out his window, with his fat-belly-stuttering, threatening to call the cops on Tim if he kept stealing oranges. Anytime, his current state or rather, the current world he found himself in, reared its ugly head of truth, he plucked a memory of a note he once had in his possession from a time he once lived. He has not seen this note, physically, in years but he remembers it well. He heard it might be stored for historical purposes, preserved in a museum nearby.
On vintage, dirtied paper, ancient yet ever-present, words written in fancy chicken scratch:
Perhaps, there’s a layer between the muscle and bone. An ethereal presence. Its origin unknown. Perhaps it isn’t tied to this earth or made from our three-D cellular plane. Like a tesseract within us, guiding each of us into a true purpose, a superposition. When your body dies, it molds, you transform all energy that once held your tissue together and had once tied your feet into the gravitational pull of being human. Imagine no longer having a need for words, mind under mud, over matter, the restlessness or relaxation you feel at night, the rush of excitement or pure exhaustion you sense, your eyes floating in your mind, when the sunbeams punch and roll your-two-eyed marbles lurking in your bony skull, swaying on a soft pillowy head of dreams, and the sunlight hits your lids. Imagine never feeling lifted, gifted, strange, distracted, delighted, discomfort, lightheaded, two peas stray, disturbed, of laughter, a-lonely way, sappy or delusional. ever. again. Never knowing who you are. Not knowing where you will stray. In the tesseract of a layer that has always existed. You never could understand. Nothing to hold in your shaky hand. No one could bottle it, push the piggies out on the market, to sell and get rich, quick, dirty or clean, don’t be slow, act swift. Nothing in which humanity could switch, alter, tailor for deprivation or exploitation of others. It's for all living matter. An omnipresence. The feeling of love or self-preservation. Throughout history, soft and hard people alike, bubbly and stubbly strange souls unite, and paint pictures to fright or delight, moralized passions and grandiose passages, built up dreams in many eager minds, frolicking, in the nature of an absorbent earth. Every culture has required the same air, grown from similar enough belly of life-source fluid, yet we fight, over and over, again and again, so much we start to believe our own lies, that we are all so different. Our history, practices, skin and what our ancestors did, it is all important and consuming, our lives, of controlled environments, of people who are frail, starving, dehydrated and meek enough or those who dare to internalize a strength, the will to survive, to simply exist, to be present and daring to wonder, among those who wouldn’t question, no one escapes this, we only want a safe place to land, to find another warm soul, both weary but we form a two-way path, we branch out like trees, give us our daily comforts, forgive all trespasses, we walk the plank, guilty yet guided, into the abyss, spiraling down a milky, colorful dimension, our time in ether-earth, has either withered us to fully accept or we are but a mix of fear and curiosity of this natural end, the ultimate mind dump of feelings to hold us, as we all journey, solo, across our individual timeline, drifting and seeking, through the tesseract, and into our true form. The layer, which is dormant, yet pulsing our whole lives, itching within our hearts, a surreal knowledge forever tickling us, we giggle in disbelief, we numb ourselves with potions of sweet relief, we attribute to god for external validation, we subdue ourselves out of dignity, we yearn for mercy, waiting, for when the energy within sparks and materializes, to transform us. Into something, somewhere, in a holding pattern, perhaps, if we ever become flesh again. Perhaps, this is bias, a view that can be discounted and easily dismissed, it’s too silly, frivolous, the whimsical idiosyncrasy, my own longing, to explain my fear, explore a better version of myself, downplay my own faults and failure. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how I am still alive. Should I be this old, was I really born in 1826? I remember seeing life across many decades, the possibilities, the inferences, people change, I do not comprehend much of the new and vaguely recall the old, today’s date is August 8, 1962. I am waiting for the great reset, within, to overcome my current reality. My speech pattern seems foreign, we are all speaking English, yet some still do not understand a word I say, I’m having a friend write this as I am in distress. I’m speaking to a stranger who is either compassionate or crazy, maybe both, I don’t know. He’s a forgivable friend. I’ll wait. I will be called to a judge. I’ll wait for my turn, to hear the call.
The note has an address, on the backside, if only he could remember the address rather than the long, nonsensical poem. He found the poem so strange and beautiful, it became embedded into his DNA. Maybe, it said 16 Sycamore Street or Avenue. He will try the library again tomorrow. A social worker from the shelter couldn’t help him secure a California Identification card due to lacking a birth certificate, but an old friend helped him get a fake one. He needed an ID to secure a library card then, he could enter the vault. He will find the note. Tim fell asleep to a dream of taking the note from the vault and hiding it in his pocket, while passerby after passerby ignore him sleeping, cocooned in a stained sleeping bag, snoring. They don’t know his story. They will never know where he has been. They have no idea about tomorrow, only a dream, creeping in during sleep.
[To be continued]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Warmth is a Historical Fiction story with Science-Fiction elements, and is intended for creative purposes only, do not take this seriously, and is intended for Mainstream Fiction categorical reasons. Soon, this will become a Screenplay and eventually, a film. Stay tuned. All rights reserved. Copyright 2010 - Marcella Cordova King. Any reuse or publication (beyond Fair Use) must have written permission from the author/publisher. If Fair Use is applicable, then please credit/cite this source website please and thank you.
