Green Fedora

     I like to get away sometimes. I like to lock myself up in that shadowy back corner of my mind where no one dares venture for fear of giant spiders and cobwebs. It’s a self-inflicted isolation, a rather melancholy existence, but it suits my purposes.

Click. Click click. Click. Space. Scribble, space, scribble, space, period. Like spirited staccato notes, the sounds of writing.

Sometimes I wonder, What’s the point? I go to school, I do my homework, I go to college, I get a job, I die. I brood a bit and wallow in my pensive puddle. After a while, I stop caring what people think about me, stop worrying about those I’ve offended by my introspective silence. It’s hard to be quiet because some just don’t understand. But watching other people helps me think. They have their own beliefs and anxieties and aspirations, but somehow I can see my own reflection in their faces.

Sitting on the bus, staring out the wide window, watching the people pass. Knowing that each has a story. Man smoking the cigarette, where are you going in such a hurry? Woman with the overlarge canvas bag, whom do you love? Teenager waiting at the bus stop, what are your dreams?

She walks down the uneven sidewalk, in a place where Malcolm X Boulevard runs parallel to Frederick Douglass Avenue. A world so different from mine.



She walks without haste, but deliberately. Her lime-green fedora looks somewhat awkward on her metallic red hair and her cowboy boots intensify the clash. Periodically, she brings a cigarette to her plum-colored lips, never changing her stride, as though the cigarette is an extension of her hand and she, like a mythical wyrm of olde, is naturally exhaling smoke. Her gaze is unwavering, like she sees her destination far in the distance and is saving her strength for the final push. Her eyes don’t see the man in the pin-striped bathrobe searching through the garbage can on the corner or the woman with the wandering eyes mumbling to herself. Green Fedora walks on. Like a mighty Amazon, she owns the street and the jungle to which it belongs.

Then the bus makes a left-hand turn and Green Fedora takes a right into the Everything 99 Cents or More store. She’s gone but I’m still staring out my window with her image in my mind’s eye.

Click. Click click. Space. I’m immortalizing them. These people I see. The people who in their own individual ways know me, know the deep down, hidden me. The uneasiness of the man, the lonesomeness of the woman, the uncertainty of the teenager, and the insuppressible determination of Green Fedora. I feel it all, too. I lock myself up and spend time getting to know all the people whose faces live inside of me. Scribble, space, scribble, space, period.