Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/thCThWNlxyU
or read his words below:
SENTENCED TO LIFE
I’m shivering on the twilight streets of the big city, waiting in cool dampness for designated driver to appear.
The semi-darkness alters colors and textures just enough to make me re-examine my after-work surroundings.
To my left is the tall vertically-striped Watts tower glowing and glowering at the unstoppable passage of time.
Straight across the way is the large furniture store with forgotten neon OPEN sign defiantly staring back despite the fact that employees have locked up and headed home.
A large municipal bus pulls up, occluding the OPEN sign, awaiting permission of a traffic light. I gaze into the large windows where passengers move about under the eerie bluish hue of interior lights. It looks as if i’m gazing into an aquarium. The occupants tread air and brace for the journey.
Music of the asphalt accompanies all. Horns make horn sounds, tires screech, parkers try to park parallel in multiple back-and-forth wriggling patterns, cars with right-blinkers ablaze turn left anyhow, courier services idle their vehicles. Other drivers weave around them. Incredibly loud music vibrates the windows of one car, a sirened ambulance forces me to stop ears with fingers, pedestrians poop-pause their yappers, plastic bags at the ready.
Chattering teens stroll by on their way to an Alabama Theatre concert. A crestfallen shopper pulls the overtime shopping penalty ticket off his windshield and mutters sadly. One panhandler puts a hand out, a power-tailored attorney hustles ’round the corner, hugging leather briefcase.
I suddenly realize that I have been sentenced to life.
Life on the streets, life among strangers and friends and passers-by.
A life sentence is what I am privileged to serve, here in the tiny wonderland that is my ‘hood, my livelihood, my worldly world of pavement and people and creatures of the twilight
© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed