Gentle Insurrectionists Who Surprise Us with Sudden Wisdom
The elderly man with slight stoop, dancing Bernie hair and plastic bag filled with newspapers and notes and odds and ends, walks into the shop and, not looking right left up or down, focuses on one small row of books that has captured his vision, intensely examines several titles and picks up a couple.
Entering just behind him are two young people inhabiting their creative Charles Addams costumes and tattoos and piercings, their quiet demeanor both gentle and sweet, their intelligent book selections telling me more than their appearance.
The Bernie-haired customer speaks loudly and intelligently and insistently and feels he’s the only person in the room, as he inquires about titles he would like to order.
Then, it being a busy Saturday, other carnies begin to pour in, creating an instant social event, a cocktail-less party of disparate personalities who ordinarily would not associate one with the other in a backyard barbeque.
Some are lonely, alone and wanting to be noticed at whatever price, others are suburban loft tourists checking out the city life they consider to be curious but fascinating, trailed by couples, cross-dressers, trans everybodies, quiet insurrectionists…all here to instruct us how to be better people, how to treat each other with respect, regardless of size, shape, color, fragrance, attire, attitude, beliefs, limitations.
These Solitudes are acting out their off-duty personas, being or pretending to be who they are or who they would like to be, forgetting for a few whiles their restricting but necessary day duties, expressing their cultural and counter-cultural uniqueness in the safe environment of an old book store.
No-accounts who, within these walls, do count, do matter.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood
© Jim Reed 2016 A.D.