Secrets of Invisibility?

True Story: On the southbound MARTA back into the city I was sitting across from this big guy with a tuft of afro bound up in a paisley headband and a scraggly beard trying desperately to hide a protruding second chin. He was one of those cats that immediately sets off a little bell in your head, not an alarm per say, but a persistent bleep on the inner freak-radar. Guy was all decked out in layers of jackets and vests despite the lingering late spring heat. He did, however, manage to get his jogging pants to perfectly match the crimson swoosh on his dirty white sneakers. Stupid the things you notice.

Anyway, at one point we were stuck at Midtown station because the train in front of us was delayed. We were there a few minutes before the conductor made an announcement that we'd be there a little longer. The big guy suddenly looked nervous, leaned forward and glanced down the corridors of the cab. He got sight of something because he immediately leaned back into his seat and lowered the headband around his eyes to create a blindfold. He just sat there real still with his hands folded knuckle to palm in some arcane mudrā. Then the emergency exit door opened on the other end of the cab and this earnest young MARTA cop comes strolling in. The cop makes his way down the corridor with his thumbs hooked through his belt. When he reaches the blindfold guy he stops in his tracks. Everyone else on the train at this point peeks the scene on the down low. We all knew collectively that something was up and loathe as we are to admit it were thirsty for some sort of lurid spectacle to occur. The cop for his part stared at the blindfolded man with curioisty while the blindfolded man stared into...?

Finally, with a shake of his head, Officer Marta continues with his rounds... eventually departing the cab via the opposite exit. A few seconds of deflated awe pass by. The doors binged and slid closed. The train rumbled into a start and the big guy, sensing he was safe perhaps, lifted the veil from his eyes back across a visibly perspiring forehead. He proceeded to take in each and everyone of us as if to say "What?" No one said a word and one by one each passenger buried their attention back in their portable distractions. All except me who must've just stared on dumbfounded with my book flat open across my lap. The guy looked back at me. A sharp wince softened into disinterest. He then shrugged slightly as if in answer to some question only he could hear and pulled out a tattered novel from one of his pockets.

I'm not sure but I may have just witnessed a lesson in invisibility.

See through the sole

Today I worked for a pack of cigarettes, lunch and train fare home. I hauled a dozen 80 pound bags of "Quickrete" over the shoulder and under the sun. I poured each bag into a black plastic tub with two gallons of water and a splash of red dye. I mixed it all up with a rusted shovel until I had something resembling a vat of blood-oatmeal before me. Then I stood there as my buddy slapped the mix into a frame across the lawn and smoothed it over with a trowel creating a block of artifical bricks for his future walkway. When he finished I would start up a fresh batch. By mid-afternoon I was caked with powder until my skin was a light dawn gray and my palms were stained a crimson terracota. In the reflection of my friends window I casted the visage of some unkempt dust ghost who bared the hands of a murderer. Finally we ran out of mud and I allowed myself to collapse into the grass. Laying there under the swaying leaves dappled with a crisp golden light, I blew cigarette smoke up at a chorus of overly cheerful birds and waited for a late lunch to arrive. I had been awake since 7 and didn't pass out until roughly five hours before then. It's been too hot up in the Witch House to sleep proper lately. Last night, twisted up restless in discarded sheets, I was delivered into the sanctuary of a brief oblivion only after conjuring the company of broad hipped and thick thighed were-kitten lovers to spy on. So I just floated there in a state of fatigued, the details of the world around me drained of some innate meaning until only empty forms floated around the noon lit lawn. All of it passing like a dream forgotten as quickly as it is remembered.

My combat boots can now tell the toll of my biography better than I can. Once they made the outfit and the outfit made the man. They kicked in doors, pedaled great distances and pirouetted across naked dancefloors with ease. In their shine you could the swirling laser lights reflected above and had even known the tender lash of a lover's tongue across their surface. Now they are encrusted with red clay, clumps of hardened concrete, stained with each splash of puddle and stomp of bullshit I've taken over my travels. The sides are coming apart at the seams. The toes have had the polish scraped off until only a dirty gray smear remains. The tips of the laces are frayed into a spaghetti bouquet of thread and have had to be melted with a lighter in order to slip through the rings again. The soles are worn down to the faintest layer of rubber and each have a quarter sized hole in them allowing me to feel the raw ground through them.

Sometimes though, when I sit on the edge of my chair, after peeling the boots off my feet in a hiss of steam, I hold them lightly in my hands and lift them to my eyes to peer into those open wounds worn through the soles. At first there isn't much to see really, blackness and a faint spill of light tunneling through the openings at best. But after awhile I begin to see something else, something better. I see tomorrow. Not the real one that comes to soon and brings with it only regret for its passing, but rather that divine promise we have made with the future to bring forth the person we truly want to be.

And it isn't much to look at but it's enough after all... and the boots drop from my hands and the day passes into the next.