Observations from the Roof, the Vendor

I had a rather eye opening day today and I seem to be back on the roof where it all started last night. After a night of chatting with the vqs I tried to get to sleep early, well early for me. For various reasons I found myself tossing in bed unable to sleep. Around four in the morning I pulled on a sweatshirt and some cutoffs and decided to go wander the neighborhood. I wandered the dark and empty streets, or what passes for dark and empty streets on a summer night in the Village.

Eventually I stopped to get an early edition Times and ended up drinking coffee and talking to the vendor. I guess he doesn’t get much company at that hour because he proceeded to give me a life update. At one point he was telling me about his daughter who lives out on the left coast and whom he hasn’t seen in years. But than he pulled out his cell phone and told me he talks to her every day.

Something about that hit a loose wire in my brain because, as he talked on, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I have been thinking about it ever since. Now I always talk about how I ‘burn bridges’ leaving people behind like so many piles of bones alongside the road of my life. Not that it has to be my way all the time, more like I find it hard to deal with life’s problems and I find it so much easier to just walk on and leave it all behind. Its why have so few really old friends and always seem to depend on my family for support.

What makes this all more intense is the fact that at the moment the friends I do have seem to be scattering to the four corners. My sister is deep into field hockey, Ash’s girl friend is off visiting family and attending a theatre seminar and one of my best friends is off in wilderness unknown hunting bears.

After a day of thinking I came to determination of sorts. I just don’t think I am any longer the loner I once was, the loner that all my life I thrived on being. Maybe part of it is living in such a totally and constantly intense environment or maybe its just I’m getting older. Maybe I’m just maturing into a more normal person after twenty eight years. Honestly I have no idea why the vendor’s story did this to me. Karma, always karma.

The only thing of any substance to come out of all this meditation is this. I have a friend I call Pitts, its short for Pittsburgh and the reason is worth a blog post all its own and maybe one day I’ll get to it. She left PSU just before me, moving to LA and a job at UCLA just before I moved to the Village. For a long time we would talk everyday but now we just don’t seem to do it as much. I guess its one of those another place and another time type stories, things would have could have been so different had i met her at another time in my life. But today I realized I don’t want her to become one of those piles of bones along the road, honestly I miss her. There are only so many tall dark arrogant bitches in the world and we have to stick together. So I called her, talked for like two hours, and until we said goodbye it seemed like we were never apart. It felt good.

Well this turned into one of the longer posts i have written but I still have to get back to my newspaper vendor. After finishing my coffee and a last smoke I decided that the nicely caffeinated muah really did need some sleep after all so I said goodbye and headed for home. Hopefully I get to talk to him again but when I finally woke I wasn’t so sure the whole episode wasn’t just a dream. Than I found a paper next to the bed and realized that it really did happen. Strangely I found these words scribbled on the paper in my handwriting. I have no idea if I saw or heard them somewhere before or they came out of my sleepless brain. Ill finish with them because they seem fitting ….

No one knows till they have it
No one cares till they lose it
No one bleeds till they live it
No one wants to admit it
No one can be without it
No one truly lives till they feel it

The journey continues.

Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good