wordsmithlind

Hello, another short story.  More regular blogs coming some time in the future… 

He walked down the busy corridor on his way to the El.  He looked at all the people rushing around him.  He wondered if all of it was worth?  Of course not, the summer is almost over and he was yet to enjoy it.  The sky turned its dance of surreal light, but he was too low to enjoy it.  His spirit had long since left him.  What his spirit didn’t kill, the buildings did.  He could not see most of the dance, so what was the point.  To catch a glimpse was but a tease. 

            His memories of the recent past define his present.  He lives in continual disappoint as a result of his enjoyable past.  Is this part of getting old?  He wasn’t even that old, yet he had given up.  He was stuck.  He moved in circles and the weeks repeated the days that filled the year.  He here was.  Tomorrow he would be here.  Next week he would be here.  The fall would come.  He would be here.  Then the winter.  Always on time, always here.  He would always be here. 

            That was the worst part of it, being here.  Perpetual “hereness” he called it.  The Always.  The inevitable. The here.  Here.  Here.

            He walked onto the El, jam packed with the rest of those who were here.  Here they were.  Here was the girl he saw everyday, listening to her Ipod reading a celebrity magazine.  Here was the man with the mustache.  Here he saw the man’s hair grow grayer as the months went by.  Here was the lady who never thought she would be here.  Here she has been for 30 years.  Here she stepped one day and never left.  Here she was content. 

            He walked down the road towards his apartment.  Here is where he never wanted to end, but here he always did.  Here was the end.  Here was the beginning.  Here is where the middle never was. 

            A blues man on the river once told him that he was like the river, always on the move. 

            “I ha’n’t mov’d in 30 year’,” he said in a scratchy, whiskey strained voice.  “But I always keep movin’, always keep movin’.  My body’s old, my death’s near, but m’mind, m’mind keeps-a-goin’, keeps-a-rollin’, keeps-a-flowin’.  The riv’r ne’er sits, ne’ther m’mind, ne’ther m’mind.”

            Everyday he thought of this.  Everyday he thought of this as his mind dwindled down to nothingness. 

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