Not All Who Wander Are Lost

I was walking. It had been a hot day, but the evening was cool, and I was shivering. I had a canteen full of cheap wine, and I sipped it for warmth. I had walked far enough that the lights of the city no longer obscured the stars, and they were company. I remembered all the nights with my father, him pointing out constellations and the names of the stars, and wished I had paid more attention. "You," I decided, pointing at a star at random, "can be Sirius, because you're very bright. And you," I picked out five stars that were arranged in a vague W, "you ladies will be Cassiopeia. Just for tonight."

I was removing myself from everyone, but I was not isolating myself. I was absorbing the night, riding the tide of the universe around me, and trying to figure out if that's maybe Mars on the horizon. I could have come home and gotten my star charts, but I had already walked so far. Anyway, the things I didn't know weren't bothering me. It was the things I did know that were trouble.

A not-so-much needed ego boost

Had an interesting experience. I was out on a delivery. I started, of course, heading down 4th Avenue from 16th Street. But it's important to avoid lights and there are MANY on 4th, plus which sometimes you turn right onto a street instead of crossing it because of oncoming traffic.
So I went into my serpentine routine on my way to the 600 block of 9th Avenue. I hung a left up on 14th Street, across 5th to 6th Avenue, where I turned right. I went a block on 6th before turning left onto 13th Street (only just barely making the light), and then right again on 7th Avenue, then left onto 10th Street for the viaduct. Coming out of the viaduct the light on 8th Avenue was red, so I turned right and then left up 8th Street, and was just about to turn right onto 9th Avenue when I saw flashing lights in my mirror. “Now what in the hell,” I thought, “could they possibly want?”
I pulled into a parking lot and the cops pulled in crosswise behind me, blocking me in. They walked up to me and saw the pizza sitting next to me on the seat. “Oh, that explains it,” they said. They had first noticed me because I sorta cruised through a stop sign or two. Didn't run them, exactly, just kinda didn't come to a full-and-complete stop, 'cause there was no one coming. Plus I was driving maybe just a little bit fast. So they followed me, and then when I started weaving through town, they though maybe something was up. In the words of one of the cops, “We thought you were taking evasive action, trying to lose us,” they said.
“Trust me,” I thought but wisely didn't say, “if I'm trying to escape from you, I'll be driving a lot crazier than that.”
Anyway, they radioed my ID in just to make sure I had no outstanding warrants, and then they let me go without a ticket. But the point of the story is the strange and wonderful thing they said to me before they pulled away. They said, “If you'd had a light on your truck telling us that you were a pizza man, we wouldn't have pulled you over for that.”
See, this confirms something that I'd kind of suspected, which is that regular traffic laws, within reason, don't apply to the pizza man. It makes sense because cops order pizzas too, and they like it when the pizza gets there fast and hot just as much as you do. So it appears that, as far as the cops are concerned, there's a separate set of traffic laws for us, which appeals to me, and also makes me want a lighted sign for my roof.
Courtney thinks that I have the biggest ego of anyone she knows. I disagree; I just think that I have a very healthy self-image, and part of that self-image is the belief that I'm the perfect avatar of cool, and am completely capable of figuring out my own rules for being a productive member of society (in so far as I'm interested in being a productive member of society, which frankly ain't that far). I think that I should be trusted to use my own judgment.
Anyway, I'm sure that, upon hearing this story, Courtney is thinking to herself, “Oh great, just what he needs: support for his belief that the rules that apply to other people shouldn't apply to him.” And really, I'm guessing that some others among you who know me are thinking more or less the same thing.
Well, it isn't so much that I think they shouldn't apply to me. I think most of them shouldn't apply to anyone at all. The overwhelming majority of rules I'm aware of are painfully stupid and need to be eliminated, and this includes virtually all traffic laws. I have a sticker on my truck that reads “The more corrupt the society, the more numerous the laws,” and I absolutely believe that's true. Our governments, both federal and local, have become more and more convinced that they have the right to tell us what we aren't allowed to do, and how to do the things we are allowed to do.
So, I don't think the rules should apply to me, dear reader, but I also don't think they should apply to you. However, in spite of the empathy I try to have with you good people, I only have to experience being myself. Given that, it seems to me that the rules not applying to me is a good place to start. I'm satisfied with that for now.

Everyday Heroes

There's been strange goings-on in this little town of late.

I was out on a delivery, and came up out of the 10th Street viaduct towards the corner of 9th Avenue. Ahead of me, a car was sitting, burning, in the middle of the street. Not, like, overheating, or burning oil, but actually on fire. Not wishing to pass too close to a burning car (which, after all, is full of substances that are likely to go BOOOOM), I ducked into the Family Dollar lot and prepared to turn onto 9th.

Just then the light at the intersection changed, and the burning car started moving. I hadn't realized there was someone in it; I couldn't see well enough through all the smoke. But yes, there was, and the mad motherfucker was still driving it. Me, I would have abandoned the silly thing. I watched him out of sight, shaking my head and saying, “Whoa...dude's hard-core.” 'Cause, really, what else can you say? Folks think they're tough 'cause they get tattoos and body piercings, but to hell with that. Buckle up and lemme set you on fire; we'll see how tough you are.

A fella came into the store today and placed an order, but then asked to have his pizza delivered. He had no phone, he explained, so he couldn't call it in. We assumed that he was having the pizza delivered to his kids or something, and paying for it while he was away. That happens sometimes. Didn't matter to us; we'd gotten our money. So we made it, and I drove it to the address he'd given.

The address is actually right here on my block, just around the corner from my apartment, but it's an abandoned building. At least I've always assumed it was abandoned; the ground-floor windows are all boarded up and there are “No Trespassing” signs everywhere, and as far as I can tell the power's shut off to it.

I didn't see how he could possibly live here, and I checked the address twice before going in...4** Fourteenth Street, #4. I considered calling the store to make sure there hadn't been a mistake on the ticket, but my curiosity was piqued. Who doesn't love exploring?

Bemused, I entered and found an extremely steep and evil-looking staircase in my path. I followed it up to a door with a big 4 drawn carefully on in magic marker. I had to knock several times, but the door finally opened, and there was the guy who had placed the order, the guy who had been in the store thirty minutes earlier. I guess he had wanted pizza but hadn't wanted to carry it home on a hot day, so he'd coughed up a couple of extra bucks to have me bring it for him.

I was curious about the apartment, of course. What sort of crackhouse is he setting up, forty yards from my own apartment? He didn't open the door very wide, but I could see past him into the place, and actually he'd done it up pretty nice. It was furnished, and although it appeared that I'd been right about the absence of electricity there were lots of windows, so the place was airy and well-lit. I could see a sofa and coffee table, and in the small section of kitchen visible to me there was a nice, old-fashioned table, and the counters sparkled. It looked very comfortable and neat, inexpensive but really quite homey. I was impressed.

As he took the pizza, breadsticks, and soda from me, a very lovely young woman walked into my view. She saw me and smiled. She was slender, black, and probably about twenty. And let me explain what I mean by lovely. She was not pretty, like girl-next-door pretty, but beautiful, like she belonged on the cover of a magazine, except that no magazine could possibly be classy enough for her, and no photographer talented enough to do her justice.

I looked from her to the old man and tried to judge: Daughter? Granddaughter, even? May-December romance, possibly? I returned the smile, shyly and awkwardly, and she passed out of my view into the kitchen in search of plates.

He gave me a small tip and asked me to lock the downstairs door when I left, which I did, thinking to myself, “Living in an abandoned building is only a half-step up from homelessness, but in this case, that's a serious goddamned half-step.” I haven't walked a mile in his shoes or anything, but that seems like a nice little world he's made, basically from nothing.

I'm fascinated by these two guys. The first guy, the guy driving the burning car, you've got to admire his courage, if not his intelligence. And the second guy, carving a comfortable existence out of the wreckage of the city, you've got love his resourcefulness. Everyday heroes, I'm calling 'em, and I like this town a lot more than usual today.