I am walking down through time and imagination. The old style stairs in a young building that attempts to invoke austerity of traditional education. As I float down the winding stairs I see a relic from the predecessor of this building. The previous gym. How odd. A piece of the brick from the past with another building etched onto it. I could almost see the athletes, all men, all white, working out and training in that little etching. And finally I have landed a little awkwardly onto the ground floor from four flights towards heaven. A hint of sunlight finally penetrates into the building through the exit door. My task here is done. I prance out like a deer that had just narrowly escaped the claws of a lioness dying of hunger. Today suddenly has been a beautiful day, the sun contrasts the rain of yesterdays, the warmth against the windy cold, and the smiles on people against sullenness in my memory. I hop on my bike and my muscles forbid me from going too fast. So they can rest and so I can enjoy the fairy tale.
A man sits on a bench. He is lost, I can see from his eyes. He sits in front of the city's old cemetery where people from famous statesmen to fallen soldiers are buried. He won't be buried there. He's neither a hero nor a leader to anyone. He has simply already buried himself in the grave of his own uselessness. I can see the moths fluttering out of his soul as the last caterpillar metamorphoses from his humanity and escapes, leaving an eaten out shell no more substantial than the skeletons behind him.
In front of me, nearly getting run over by me, are a couple, old, and I can't tell what race they belong to. It's as if their race is changing like the turning kaleidoscope. Each smile or frown, just a slight twitch of each strand of muscle, turns them from one ethnic or racial group to another. Talk about multi-racial couple! They seem lost. They just came out of the cemetery. Did they come back the dead? They mind as well; they seem lost in this modern world, and worse, they have no map, no direction in this town unfamiliar to them in space and time. I zip past them and they hardly notice me.
A man before me walks and is singing at the same time. His smile is so fantastic that I can almost see what has made him so happy. I see a circus of people and events that are all happy, jolly, and all wishing him the best. There are clowns that remind him of his own silliness. There are animals that dance in a circle to bring him peace. There are strangely shaped but gorgeous women blowing him kisses. And in the center of it all, the ring master opens his heart showing a welcome so warm that embarrasses the sun that had finally crawled out of the clouds.
A bump on the sidewalk redirects my attention back to my bike ride. And when I reach the end of the block, end of the block that encompasses the cemetery, I see reality set back in. It's raining on the other side of the street, where college sullen students hurry to their next classes now that they had just left one, where car drivers are impatient but helpless as the students risk their lives jay-walking all over, where my life resides and all its trouble and some of its joy await me. I take one last look back. I don't see the young man of the circus, the walking dead couple, or the hollow man anymore. It's enough that I've seen them. It's time to move on.
