Homeless Story of J, Part II

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the fictional testimony of a hypothetical homeless person named J, who could be you or me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I perch on the lip of the gutter, as if it were an anaconda of scum about to attack me.  From here, the world seems grotesquely unfair. The car people, robotic and bored, will live for many more stressed-out decades; and yet I am going to die soon.  I who feels alive and free. Part of me wants to embrace my new motto--There Are Worse Fates Than Death--and part of me is just sad and sick and crying. I could go to the shelter and get a cot but I’d be just one more snore noise and fart smell among who are mentally destroyed. I’d have to chant Christian scripture at night, in my cot, to earn my beans; and I'd have to chant more scripture in the morning to beg for my cornflakes.  A cot = conformity.  What is the price of nonconformity? The anaconda of scum in the gutter.  And that horrible question; it comes whenever I let my mind wander: Can there be meaning in a struggle that will never perceived except by the one who struggles? Would Beethoven’s 9th Symphony mean anything if it sat forever, unread, at the bottom of the sea?  Known only to Beethoven?  Disappearing from Earth when he died?  Surrounded by people, I am the Hermit.  I am the Hanged Man. I pay dearly for the prophet stature of my dirty clothes. What I wear, most of all, is a pillory of social condemnation.  Although invisible, it has reduced my existence to shame or nothingness, whichever hurts the more. My mind is keen, now that I’ve been let go--from my job, from my country.  I stood on my backpack this morning and shouted out to the scurrying workers rushing by: “Busyness is the enemy of hard work!” Some of them laughed. One guy applauded.  There were a few dollars. A burger at McD’s?   Ever been in line for the take-out window without a car?