The sky looked like it had freckles today, as the clouds exaggerated the blueness of the San Francisco sky. And with the fresh autumn breeze from the west, it made San Francisco California echo a pleasant rhyme. People suddenly stood frozen, and looked up into the skies. It seemed with these particular conditions a smile was just an easy reflex. They just happened. At least James Redburn thought so, and took notice of this by going for a walk. He was inspired.
As he walked, his eyes raced down one of San Francisco’s hills to another, which always provided him with a better view than the last, previous …incredible view. He thought of traversing all of San Francisco’s hills, but time was ‘different’ for James today. It was hard to ‘keep track’, as the sun crept across the sky providing James with a different …’take’, on the already previous incredible views. Nonetheless, I still believe he walked all day.
At dusk, James took a break atop a freeway overpass as the people raced in their cars, below …somewhere else. And, since he had seen and felt so much on this pleasant fall day; now, the thoughts and the happenings of the people below, somehow, drifted up to James and could be seen as easily as pages in a book. He had obviously traversed to a faraway place ---somewhere else:
In a posh neighborhood of San Francisco a man was rubbing his red and swollen face. Just this morning Mr. and Mrs. Smith fought. There were arguments about this, about that, and then, it got so ugly Mr. Smith got slapped.
In the Haight-Ashbury district, in Golden Gate Park, under shrubs, deep in the park where Ken Kesey had pulled up in his moveable acid-test bus decades ago; today in that park a homeless man stabbed another, killing him over symmetrically smashed tin-cans, and a sandwich.
In a dilapidated district, Mr. Chung reminisced, sometimes with tears, with any empath, about the unshaven man who wore rags, who just got stabbed, that brought in thirty pounds of symmetrically smashed tin-cans at 10:00. Mr. Chung felt gloom.
The good looks of William Johnson, a stock broker, with his blonde curly locks and blue eyes, which reminded his friend of the picture of Jesus Christ hanging in church windows across America, and also the world ---got bored. He no longer loved decorating his charming Financial District condominium with his college fraternity memorabilia. The beer mugs on his mantel piece were now in no particular order. He also couldn’t stomach to watch another up or down tick at his brokerage house. He was ‘passed over’ this year for the week trip in Hawaii given to the best sales-person.
In that District, called the Financial District, where billions, maybe even trillions of dollars are passed to him and her and back again couldn’t help either. Even the green-back thought about being somewhere else. No one wanted to eat, go to the movies, the plays, and or all forms of entertainment. It was redundant misery. “Tomorrow is another day,” someone in that posh district said while pulling their Crate and Barrel blankets over their head.
Two young lovers seemingly with enough passion between the two to fill the overwhelming hugeness we all feel, became stale. “Why aren’t we more like Jewels and Adam,” was no longer spoken by other lovers. Jewels was now begging Adam. If they were somewhere else, maybe, who knows ---it could have been something else?
Finally James left the overpass. He wished everybody had enjoyed the pleasant autumn day.
The End
