I have to level with you. My Mother always thought I would be a doctor. My Father pictured me as a Lawyer. All that time I knew deep down inside my desires would overwhelm the discipline needed to achieve those goals.
I'm not a doer, for good or evil. When I hear the President talk, I always assume he's flashing back to his crack head and alcoholic days and really means "Evil Dewars on the Rocks." Instead I'm an observer. I sit here at street level, mapping the pulse of the big city from the relative safety of my refrigerator box.
There's no doubt the city has a rhythm. On a hot summer day, I can tap my foot to the steady throbbing of commerce and congestion. In the fall, the cool breezes flatten out the tempo like a string quartet playing a Baroque melody. By the wintertime, I shiver and wrap my dirty blanket around me in a warm embrace. I watch the maids and janitors who clean the homes of the doctors and lawyers my parents thought I would be standing patiently in a queue, waiting for the transit authority bus to take them to their mindless
workplaces. Then the spring arrives bringing a syncopation to the city as the birds chirp and the children emit peals of laughter as they run around in their shorts and t-shirts and I hear that sweetest sound of all, the patter of falling coins meeting the bottom of my tin cup.
In a way I'm a journalist working my own particular version of the city beat.
Comments