It’s hard to quantify things when you are looking backwards through the filter of memory. What happened? What did we do? Where did we go? Two months in California, surely I have stories to tell. For a singular moment in time, I am that goofy, straight-faced, storyteller again. I remember. I remember good things. I remember bad things. I remember sloth and melancholy. I remember unbridled joy and wonderment. If anything I mention here has been in a previous post, I apologize. Perhaps the stories will be slightly different now with the influence of time.

So, let’s get started.

Scarab and I are walking down Sunset Boulevard to the library so that we might check emails and such. We’re a little early and the library is not yet open. We light up cigarettes and try to kill the ten minutes or so before we can go inside and get out of the heat.

A man, no younger than 60, approaches us. His clothes are tattered and he carries a small backpack and a 3 day beard. He asks for spare change. We scramble through our pockets, but find nothing. Scarab offers him and cigarette and begins to roll up several as we talk. He tells us that he’s homeless, which we could have guessed. Talks a bit about his former life. A happy gleam in his eyes. Then the present breaks through the dream-memory. He says his wife is gone. His children won’t speak to him. Everything he owns is in the pack on his back. He was a Vietnam Vet, like so many of our nation’s homeless. He sleeps on the wheelchair ramp to the library when the LAPD don’t run him off.

Scarab finishes up a handful of cigarettes for the man, and he departs. I’m sure we’ve already faded from his memory. But we don’t forget.

Jack.
I Listen.