New York Short Story.
Once while I was living in NYC I met a homeless man who could easily portray Robin Williams in "The Fisher King Part 2". He was what I would consider brilliant. Not quite a poet, the man could write some heavy duty prose. Alienated from society he was always thinking outside the box and as I spoke to him, I would envision the man surrounded by voracious readers and would-be writers transfixed by the outstanding fluency of his rhetoric. I would picture him as a professor of academics in some fancy East Coast university and the "star" of such. His writings were not only fascinating, but also edgy, poignant and highly philosophical. He was worldly, knew Roman and Greek history to precise dates and even spoke some Latin.
I would share long afternoons with him listening to his arguments carefully and learning much in the process. He didn't seem to want much from life, except for the tools he would use for his basic survival and the open opportunities as he would call them to learn something else, as a constant, everyday.
He said his name didn't matter but everybody knew him as "The Pope". His face was like that of a biblical prophet (some homeless people have a tendency to look that way); his weathered face told the tale of his hard existence, and his deep green eyes shone from the brilliancy within the frames. Who was this so knowledgeable man? Was it my destiny to meet him? I don't think it'll be too soon before I will find the answer to that question. In the meantime, I keep on reading the manuscripts that he wrote and that he so kindly left behind. "For the kids that are yet to become whole"--he said, "and for you" as he went outside, back into the streets of New York City. He succumbed to pneumonia in that city on Feb 22. 2009. One year and one day today.
But he did leave in me a sense of wanting, a void that only pure knowledge would satisfy, even if I didn't know what that meant at the time. To never stop searching, never stop discovering. And to find out what really makes us tick. As human beings and as souls.
Maybe we'll meet again, "Pope", in some other place, or alternate Universe...and I hope by then I'll have something to tell you that you would love to hear. Right now I have no idea what that is, but I have no doubt there's a secret on those pages. A message of some kind, a hidden treasure. And I will continue to try to decipher it. Perhaps then, I, too, will become what you meant by being 'whole".
Stillmind
Miami, Feb 23, 2010
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