Part 4 - Time Enough

Part the first
Part the second
Part the third
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The soot of history stains. It gets into microscopic nooks, infintecimal crannys. Affecting, infecting, changing. It is a mechanism without awareness, without conscience yet carrying with it a power that spreads imagination thin, hammered into awe. Rolling with it's brother Time, it trails everything behind it. But it hasn't caught up with me. Or has it?

There was a part in my life I was living out of trash bins. On nights that were clear I slept outside at the Esplanade, my home away from home. It was just above what passed for a train station in town. In fact, my friends would try the payphone there before calling my house. On nights that were poor I snuck into garages, I slept in lofts and at bus-stops.

Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to steal frozen dinners from the grocery store? I lived on mac&cheese, left over burgers from fast food joints and whatever I could talk shop owners into giving me.

From time to time I would work as a telemarketer calling people for donations to send handicapped children to the circus. Later on I would realize it was all a scam. Every month the manager would disappear with all the money. I suppose if I'd thought about it I would have felt bad for fleecing the public. I did feel good about the fact that I was fired and re-hired under 3 different names. While I was there I spent most of the night talking on the phone with the girl across the room. Other times I did legitimate work, helping people move, cleaning houses, painting, odd jobs. And then again, you might find me panhandling.

It must have been uncomfortable for people. The town was populated by rich white elitists. I was a blemish, when they saw me sleeping at the busstop. I was an open sore. The authorities were there to frisk me on a daily basis and yet, not once saw me sleeping outside in the snow. Years later I would find out that one of their number was convinced I was a drug dealer and had the payphone at the esplanade tapped. Ha!

This is when I found the house again. They had moved into an apartment above a bakery. This was when life began easing up on me. I met people in my situation, we would help each other out by getting jobs so we could steal food and cigarettes for each other. I'd found the closest thing to 'home' I could.

And so it is that history rolls over me. Trailing me in it's wake. Unconcerned of it's effects. But it hasn't caught up with me yet. Has it?