Maybe I'm facing the wrong direction. Nothing makes sense from the angle at which I find myself. I read things, and they seem reasonable, but I can't seem to apply them to my situation. I wonder how things are done. I know where I want to go, but I don't know where I am. My map says, "You Are Not Here" beside every red dot. I hope I'm somewhere. Maybe I'm facing the wrong direction. Which way is toward? I can never seem to turn toward, only away. Nothing makes sense from here.
Take David, for example.
David sits sweaty in the stifling night heat of his homeless home, a box trailer abandoned unlocked in the parking lot of a forgotten shipping company. He's in shorts and nothing else and he's lying back on the soft blanket he found. Found? He stole it. It was a lucky find, and no one needed it. Well, no one was looking anyway. There is no air movement and David cannot sleep. The heat is the problem with his life, he decides. Air movement. "How would things have turned out," he wonders, "if it just wasn't so damned hot all the time." Then he remembers January in the shelter when they stole his bicycle, his bike. If not for the ice and snow, the fear of freezing to death, he'd still have his bike. Meanwhile, not a mile away, rows of homes hum with air conditioning, moving air. He rides by them sometimes, walks since January. Sometimes he finds things over there. Once he'd found a blanket that no one needed, a lucky find. He's been there hundreds of times, maybe thousands. "I wonder how you get over there," he thinks, but he is pretty sure you can't get there from here.
There is something wrong with us, David, but it's okay. There's something wrong with everyone. We can't all be in the same place anyway. Only the second person or the third person can be there. The first person is always here.
Hello, friends. Where are you today? Can I get to you from here?
Love.
