No Happy One Wears a Coat

I stole a sense of decency from a man. My father. But he didn't miss it. He just forgot how to use it because he stopped using it so long ago because he kept forgetting how to use it. I shared mine with him later on by losing my shoes.



Actually if I could just stop for a second you should know there's this lady behind me in this coffee shop who can't stop complaining about how cold it is. I don't mean to break your undivided attention and full immersion you were giving me just now :) ... but she could not make my point better.

It's not even a little bit cold here.

I found weather. I found heat and I found cold like you'll have to keep reading to believe.

I had no shoes. It goes like this...

My father has atrophying decency. I leave him in Istanbul with the idea that I might walk the mighty Earth in flipflops.

Today is October 23rd? This was 186 days ago. There were angels in the sky that day keeping out the cold, for I slept under stars. I've made a lot of mistakes, but few greater than giving up any chance I have to tell people this: shoes, sweaters, & jackets are pointless burdens for a decent individual.

While old men whine in the wind and the rain, sensible teenagers just generate more heat, drink profusely, or ask a stranger for shelter. That (and now I'm speaking to you) is the brilliance of decency: freedom.

And so I was.

When the exact flipflops I wear now are the only things between you and the afterlife, when globes of sky and moons and stars heave (for that is not too strong a word) above you at night and frosted sand melts in 110 degree heat at noon and stiff medications of sunscreen and aloes are not on the list of twenty four items in your bag on your back and dehydration starts from the inside out it is not hard to see yourself traipsing the globe as though it were only a mile wide and being propelled, heaved behind you as you balance on top, only pausing long enough to take a picture so your friends and future self - both known to be more skeptical than they ought - believe you.

There was weather. 185 days ago. 184. 183.

Troy.



Izmir.



Ephesus.



Thunder. Sandstorms. Sun. There was weather.

Syria.



Lebanon.



Palestine.



Be on your best behavior, they all warn, for Sean McGowan is on his way.

And decency's only downfall is disuse. Neglect. Tautology.

160 days ago. 159. 155. Heaving towards the present as only the past can. Almost, though not entirely, unlike now: waiting in limbo for the future. Almost entirely not heaving forward but patient and reading. Fully absorbed. :) Waiting...

":Ashrab Wahiid." The man tells me. 21 hours to Riyadh.

"Arba:ah sadat al Baghthad." Four hours to Baghdad.

What would decency dictate?

As I write this (because I wrote this 121 days ago in that bus station) I have no decency nor shame, for the buses left without me.

Sadness.

So I guess I put it up on my blog to make a bit more of a hero out of myself - since you don't know me - than I actually am. I write it to tell a true story, and then omit all fear. To focus only on the protagonist that is in fact - among all things - my favorite: acquired decency.

My father could use the freedom to take his hat off, for wiser folk than I often speak of growth. And if you're foolish enough to believe it there's no decent person on this planet who wears shoes, and no happy one wears a coat.
~S