Things, silence and Rilke.






As I stepped in the truck and closed the door behind me
I looked at the street
and I saw a man standing there.
He was an old Chinese man, short and skinny,
and it looked like he was carrying something on his back.
He had somehow managed to attach a rubbish bin using
some sort of a rope.
He also carried a red hula hoop around his waist.
As he walked he kept looking at the ground
and he had a tired look on his face
like a train
that had been running for way too long.
I have heard that the man walks every morning to Chinatown
where he spends his days performing some sort of a show. But I read hope in his eyes too,
some sort of hope for a way out, a break,
a single minute to breathe.

At that moment I felt I had it easy.

Life could be very hard when you were not showing clean white teeth on TV.
But you could still see mansions being built alongside the sea,
and you could still hear senators proving that even words could have no meaning,
piles of money but no love, no peace and no heart.

I thought about all that later on
on my way back home sitting on a bus packed with people
going home from another day's work, another chance
to stare through so familiar windows, like looking at
old pictures we got tired of looking at,
the late night outside announcing that we had lost it again.
No words were necessary,
we all had the same look in our eyes, like sardines gasping desperately for air,
like something with less and less feeling every time.

I was reading Rilke and I kept reading regardless,
going through the pages like a desperate man in need of forgiveness,
a man about to die hoping for three more minutes.