JOB-LESS DREAM: BY Alan Chin 2010

The ritual of walking down Broadway at the height of rush hour isn’t the same any more. Sun shifts to fog as I continue forward through the rain sprinkles that clean the streets. Time to panic is now unclear. The air is unclean and far from sterile. The sound of cable cars, chicken coop voices, weathered taxi horns and homeless beggars ignite the flavor to the taste buds of the city. Waves of chaotic robot voices grow deeper in the blackberry men with briefcases, as they clamber about, striding along with their hand crafted leather shoes. The sounds of many steps are crunching against the pavement and on the majestic marble underneath. The downtown buildings echo a haunting energy within their exterior skins. The sparkly cement sidewalks from a once flourishing time are set tarnished with years of spit and gum, blackened and not sticky anymore from the original visitor. The sly pickpocket con artists combs the streets searching for the naively innocent cell phone screamers, phony politicians and candy flipping ice cream lickers singing their song, “I mean business.” Trains of people in transit walk about with there routine method of survival.

Passing by the old post office I observed that the ten-dollar hot dog and tamale stands have conquered the sidewalks most congested regions. I squeeze by one of the jimmied shelving unit stainless steal food stands unnoticed and sneak a tiny bit of sour kraut from the bucket to hold me over. My muscles twitch from unforeseen malnourishment. My hands are impossible to clean at this point. Fingernails filled with dead skin, shit scum, and soot black like I just dipped them in old used engine grease. I’m Hungry. And-what-do -you -know, here it is, my favorite five-star restaurant with the greatest buccatini carbonara, with juicy white truffle encrusted lobster tails, not to mention the finest Rothschild and Conterno wine selection in town. All I can do is pass by, give a glance and a nod to the valet who recognizes me, while opening the door for a former colleague who seems to be doing quiet well. Exiting his shiny glass polished black onyx surface Maybach, perhaps on his company’s dime. Back to business, walk signs are on, and I continue forward as the stench of sewage fills my nostrils, I can literally taste the shit, and piss from the vapor particles blasted from the ground pipes. Life once was great.

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A new beginning every day as I challenge myself to breath in the controlled substance that I borrowed from my so-called wife some years back. Unsure of what is to come in the next-future-of-days ahead. I am lost in a void of cryptic contradictory conventions, distilled into the lapse of time. I’m past the point of physical boredom, stripped naked into the darkness and, torn from friends, family, and support. I have been pushed from the pedestal and stricken of all commodities in the realm of the materials.

As every passing day goes by while sitting in the park there are still the anchored scornful eyes of observance having their go at me. It’s not every day that you can see the vista of pure peace with all the fillings of the most tranquil qualities. In golden gate park I observe the observers searching for an answer. The majestic Monterey cypress stands tall as the ivy death vine still manages to weave its way around to strangle and consume the surrounding inhabitants. Strange as it seems I can’t help to notice a most revolutionary force of observation. Here in the park again looking as I began to hear a faint eco of rhythmic pulse. As I went near, thousands of tribal chanting voices were to be seen. A thick foggy haze clouded over the victoriously pulsing bodies. The cloud seems to have formed from the crowd, the stench of hippy body odder mixed with Barbeque tofu and burnt marijuana alluded out from the air. It was the first time I witnessed this sort activity. In my youth I’d enjoy the clamming and rigor with good friends. The revolutionary observation that I was so grateful to witness only occurred after the music stopped, and the busy bodies began to leave. There were trash trucks mobbing in to the seen with sirens of dangerous beeping sounds. Trash and recycling containers were dispersed through out the area. What was thrown in the containers was systematically and efficiently collected with ease. There were still loads of garbage and recyclables littered about the stomped down grass even after the Garbage trucks left. Then the CRAZIEST thing happened. After the garbage men left daylight was drifting away fast as I notice the three golf carts racing about to collect bottles and cans that were left by the trash trucks. The carts were driven by strong elderly Asian couples that had to have been in their eighties. As they were collecting and scavenging for the left over’s to make an extra dime, the homeless mafia emerges from the darkness of the bushes sent on a mission to attack the elderly cart driving scavengers. The homeless gangsters seem to be controlled by a tall man wearing an Abraham Lincoln size black top hat: he seemed like he was giving all the orders. And there it was, the third wave of the chain of scavengers fighting for their plight. The homeless men were armed with carved tree branches and begun strike the cart drivers and attempt to tear open their filled black trash bags, trying to steal there lute of recyclables. After the cart drivers collected their share, the homeless mafia collected the rest and disappeared. Shortly after they disappeared, the fourth wave of seagulls and other various wild animals came to fight and claim the left over’s. That is when it hit me, to observe the cycles that life has to offer.

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© ALAN CHIN | 2012