Lately I've had a bit more time to take in this world around me. Dropping out of college and living 28 hour days gives you more free time than you could ever imagine. After I finish my designs and CG modelling software tutorials, have my third cup of coffee, and finish my journal entry for the day, life is pleasant and my thoughts are in sync with my heart. I grab my hooded sweatshirt, find a pair of cargo pants (why do I only own cargo pants? what fucking movie did I see as a kid and everyone was wearing cargo pants to the fucking point where I HAD to emulate them? Oh Jesus, it was that HACKERS movie, wasn't it? sheez.), and put on my skates. I look like the rail sliding, stair jumping k00l ^*sK8r*^ boy I used to spend my days as when I was younger.
It's an interesting feeling to be out skating at 4 or 5 a.m. again. Only this time I'm not looking for empty office buildings or waxed curbs. I want to see this world around me. So much time was wasted following girls, being greedy, and trying to win the 'saddest, most misunderstood boy' award that I never experienced many things to make me a better person. So here I am, a reformed sk8r-boy rolling around the main streets and side alleyways of my neighborhood, looking for a little spiritual inspiration and free karma to add to my inner world. Being up this early is different from the world that exists from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.. Any late night coder/noder/tech. People who are inexorably drawn to these early hours just seem to have something warm and melodic pulsing thru their veins.
The computer community (E2, Slashdot , webdev crew rep-RUH-sent! Sorry. It's these cargo pants. They make me act foolish), with all our over-stimulated-hyper-injected motives, fly through cable and router, searching for bandwidth, knowledge, and a better understanding of everything; anything. But I roll passed other denizens of these hours.
Across the street, two Italian men load a bread truck, preparing for their morning deliveries. They are middle-aged and fat. One gives me a suspicious look before he locks the freight dock and heads out with his partner. Maybe I grinded on his curbs or wrote my name in marker on his van when I was younger and more stupid. I can respect those men, maybe they have families. Maybe they both have been delivering bread for years, so that their wives and children could sleep warmly under the roof they provide. Tonight one of them will take his young son up to the attic and surprise him with the new Gateway, Dell, or G4 computer he's bought for the family. The son will make stupid faces at his dad, as little children do when they're too happy to comprehend anything. They'll both poke at it, like its some kind of wounded jaguar, and hug and laugh about how big the manuals are. I wonder why computers are such dreams and objects of a better life? Especially to blue-collar workers? Hmm.
I only notice now that I've been standing in the middle of the darkened street. Cars are passing by me more, and I roll to the curb where I'm a bit safer than the middle concrete island. I catch the eye of a guy my age driving a bus. It seems like a refurbished yellow bus of my grammar school days. It's painted black and says 'Green fields retirement community' on the side. Maybe that guy hates his job. Being 21 and driving a bus, in my mind, sucks.
That guy will hate his job for the next six months. He'll hate all the cold mornings and late nights washing the bus. On his last day, before he starts his new job at a nameless accounting firm in the city, one of his old little people will bring him a plate of cookies. She will tell him about how all the other old, little people waited with quiet, hopeful eyes for that bus to pick them up. She will tell him about how she always kept him in her prayers and how they wished that they could have afforded to give him a better raise for Christmas. I hope that guy will understand how his mundane, trivial pickup and drop-offs to the market, church, and parks were the last grasps at delight and daily sanity he gave to those elderly folks. It's getting hectic out here, I don't know how long I've been standing here.
I skate home to escape the business and commerce of the 9 to 5 day. A fourth cup of coffee and my MAYA tutorials await. I get home and my feet stink. You can't even understand the aroma of five year old inline-aggressive skates. You can't. Inside my head, little acolytes and scribes record the feelings and thoughts I added to my inner world this morning. |
