"Just Walkin' Along"

I am taking a walk down to Groundwork for coffee, thinking, “What a wonderful neighborhood.”  Safe.  Quiet.  Ilyllic.

One should never do that.

Because, almost immediately, it won’t be.

A disheveled man walking in front of me, hauling a large, plastic trash bag, crosses to the other side of the street – which may be the best thing that happened to me – and almost immediately starts screaming.

“George Bush killed millions of people!  Thousands of Americans on 9/11!!!”

And so forth.

Boatloads of expletives.

Buckets of rage.

A peaceful walk, morphing into an audial tirade.  (On the other side of the street.  I guess the guy needed “elbow room” to vent, requiring a whole sidewalk to himself.)

Here’s how my mind works.  I am walking along, under jangling and maybe dangerous circumstances, and almost immediately, I imagine myself onstage in an auditorium filled with people, there exclusively to see me.

I love when places are packed to see me.  Do you mind if I take time to enjoy the worshipful tableau?

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Okay, thanks. 

And by the way, “Worshipful Audience”?  Thanks for coming to my “imagining.”

An accompanying interviewer, of taste and distinction suiting the august nature of the gathering, asks a “Puff Ball” question concerning my “writing process.”  I begin by explaining – and being used to me you know my answer’s circuitous and lengthy – that my personal “writing process”, such as it is, goes back to when I was studying for exams.

I could never study in silence.  I abhor libraries for their enforced quietude – fearing reverberating farting emanating from me – but also because I find silence painfully oppressive.  (Because I think that’s what death sounds like and I am uninterested in previews.)

As I crammed for my “Finals”, I always filled up the void, my bedside radio tuned to AM 1050 CHUM, playing the hits of the day from a truncated playlist of a dozen or so rotating ditties.   

That’s how, while memorizing Latin declensions – “U.S.-E-O-U.M.-E-O” – I also, subliminally, memorized the current “Top Ten.”

When “The Etrucans, having been vanquished” entered my brain,

“Splish splash, I was takin’ a bath…” entered as well.

As did, “One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, Rock…,” “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill…” and “…Why is everybody always pickin’ on me?”

Among numerous pop classic others.  (Many of which I actually remember.)

I then segued in my circuitous response – taped, I am sure, for archival posterity – into my standard, “I had no idea anybody was Black” – which can’t be true, I saw album covers.  What I meant was I knew but was racially disinterested, since, being from Toronto, it’s like, “So what?”

I then proceeded to quote The Muppets Take Manhattan’s, “Pipples is pipples.” (“People are people”, for those not fluent in “Muppet”), moving to an a cappella version of “I’m proud to me but I also see you’re just as proud to be you…”, ending with “By the time ‘Eve of Destruction’ bringing “protest energy” to “Bubble Gum” radio came along, my habits were already ingrained, though their grating intensity became harder to study to.”

By then, the poor interviewer forgot the original question they had asked me.

My fantasized message, rising from a buffeting stroll down a neighborhood sidewalk:

“Not every moment in life is a political battlefield.”

is what I want to tell the furious man, carrying the trash bag.

But I can’t.

So I just keep walking.

Hoping he won’t cross back to my side of the street.