In the mornings after I’ve dropped off the boys at school, as I’m crossing Broadway and 84th – my mind and iPod set to Destination Subway and the downtown #1 train toward work – he’s sitting there on a bench in the median of the avenue, facing south, downtown:  A man, sitting within a large amount of unstable flesh as if he’d been poured into a 7-foot oval cake pan and left uncooked.

His skin is dark brown; his eyes are disarmingly sharp as they spot me looking back at him.  Like an oversized Ewok from the last Star Wars movie, those eyes piercing.  And somewhat innocent, but ready to fight.  Brown and grey raggy clothes are draped over his round shoulders and hang down the front of his body like sheets over furniture to be kept free of dust during the off-season when the family’s away.  An unlit cigar butt projects from his mouth.  It looks the same length today as yesterday.  There are hundreds, it seems, used paper matches on the hexagonal concrete tile walk in front of him and around him.  I’m not sure if they’re his or not.  I wonder why they don’t get swept up.  His presence is not intrusive but neither is it easily dismissed.  He causes me to think about him.

I wonder what it’s like to be him.

In our inane way of distributing humanity into different groups, let me continue the madness by saying there are really three groups of suffering people.  First there are people who suffer but whose lives continue on relatively unscathed.  They either have enough money, or enough of a support system, that they can carry on their lives with little to no interruption in their schedules or habits or even to an extent their dreams, and their suffering - whether self-imposed or not - goes largely unnoticed, because it largely does not intrude on anyone else.  This is the vast majority of suffering people.  Some of them medicate their suffering with a substance, and their friends and family enable them, and their suffering is seen as almost romantic.  This group ranges from the eccentric billionaire child to the starving artist in New York City.

Second there are people whose suffering is more visible and whose support network is tenuous and often ad hoc.  These people are in and out of AA rooms and in- and out-patient rehab centers.  They have friends, but they are often friends who, too, are in and out of treatment facilities and programs.  They have family who are not always close, and who are not always caring about their condition.  Sometimes they’re there for them, sometimes not.  These people are trying to live and struggling.  They sometimes medicate their suffering with a substance, but it is seen as tragic.  This group is like the 19-year-old meth head I met at AA in Morrow, Georgia, who was in and out of his parents’ home and rehab and kept coming in and out of our meetings.  I never knew what happened to him.

Then you have people like this man who I see.  I would not be surprised to learn that the only people who know his name are nuns who operate soup kitchens and nurses who provide emergency care at clinics.  These people are off the grid; they have no system.  Their lives cannot be calibrated using the same scales of relationship and citizenship as the other two groups can.  They sometimes medicate with substance and it is seen as hopeless.  It almost seems as if there is no suffering left to medicate, only sheer existence, and their substance is part of that existence.

Yet, he seems undaunted.

He is not like the man I see when I get off the subway many evenings.  This second man, standing in front of a Gap store on 86th and Broadway, alternates between shouting and laughing hysterically at the concrete.  His mind is gone.  His name may be known by nuns and nurses, but he doesn’t know that they know his name.  Nor does he care.

My man in the median seems to care.  Seems to know something about life and have an opinion.  He watches me.  Follows me with his Ewok eyes as I continue across Broadway, turning up the volume on Dierks Bentley.

One day I will talk to him.  I will learn his name.

I don’t know which day.

photo:  tourlesnomssontdeja

I dislike the word one-off.

First, it’s not really a word; it’s a compound, or a term.  And as a term, it is weak:  it doesn’t really signify what it is.  It lacks a referent.  Perhaps my dislike is borne from my inability to understand, indeed, what it signifies without resorting to Merriam-Webster.

It means - for those of you who didn’t click through above - “one time” or “singular, unique.”  Now, I understand that there is a difference between singular and one-off.  Like:  you’re talking to your colleague at work and want to do an event invitation and your very capable designer will do a “one-off design,” only to be used once, for this event, and then forgotten.  Well, you certainly don’t want to call the invitation “singular,” because as such, it might tempt you by its stand-out (another one of these word-term bastards, but more acceptable) quality to use it or something akin to it again, in which case it would lose its “one-offness” but not necessarily its singularity.  So you say “one-off” to indicate that the designer should create something singular, but perhaps forgettable.

Second, it just sounds business-y.  A lot of my colleagues use the term and - God bless them (an insipid Southernism that is basically saying that at that moment you dislike the person you’re referring to but God doesn’t because he’s got more lovin’ than you) - I know they mean well and I know they want to refer to something singular and even one-time.  But to say “singular” sounds too artistic and to say “one-off” just sounds…efficient.

Again, Dear Reader, we are dealing here with a deep-seated insecurity of mine over this phrase because I didn’t get it for…months!…until I looked it up.  I had assumed it meant… I don’t know what it meant but - God bless me - I figured they all knew what they were talking about.

photo:  terri.flickr.chic

My two least favorite times of day should be my most cherished:  walking the boys to school, and putting them to bed.  They are, on the contrary, two of the most challenging that a parent faces, because what you’re talking about is, essentially, executing advanced logistical operations with the aid and consent of small criminals who have little to no moral foundation.

Let’s face it:  clothing and unclothing little bodies within a specific and relatively unmovable timeframe, and delivering them to an intended destination with their mental and physical beings intact and free of visible signs of torture or abuse, is not an easy proposition to begin with.  Doing it with subjects who respond like crazed jungle animals on crack is…difficult.  Doing it, furthermore, with a smile on your face is tantamount to sainthood.

To be truthful, getting the President of the United States around town is probably easier.  The President doesn’t roll around the bedroom floor and squeal like a stuck pig when you tell him to put on his socks.  Nor does the President do an Irish jig across Broadway with traffic bearing down on you.  Nor does he slump his shoulders when you tell him to brush his teeth.  My guess is he even brushes his teeth without a second reminder.

But that’s a hunch.

photo:  fallingutopia

She bought Friskies cat food in 8-ounce cans, four at a time, from Duane Reade, usually at 7:30 on weekday mornings.  She read Japanese for Busy People on the subway as she rode downtown to work.

photo:  fofurasfelinas

There was a mosquito in my office this evening, and I killed it without a second thought.

I saw it doing a lazy air dance in front of me, almost like a drunken kamikaze pilot who’s off course:  it was slowly lilting from right to left over my laptop as I prepared a presentation for Monday on the topic of “stewardship,” which of course includes the proper cultivation and care of God’s creation…and all the animals therein.

It was odd.

While I open my window a crack if my office gets hot, it was closed today, and we are on the 11th floor of a modernized space.  This bug was definitely out of its neighborhood.  Definitely far from home.  Which was probably Queens.

I had read part of an essay in The Sun the other day by Andrew Boyd about his stay and quasi-apprenticeship at Doi Suthep, a Thai monastery.  As part of his regimen, he was to live by certain vows:  no sexual activity, no stealing, and no killing, meaning he “couldn’t even murder mosquitoes.”  I had taken so such mosquito-specific vow, nor would I during the months from April to October.  Neither would I near large amounts of standing water during the months of November through March.

So I swatted at the damn thing first:  you know, the hand clap thing in front of you where you figure it will get dead no matter which way it goes.  But it seemed to have eluded my very un-Zen hands.  (This was indeed the sound of two hands clapping.)  I forgot about it and kept typing, still trying to figure out how it got into our space.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later I looked down along the F key row on my keyboard and just above F8, on the concave power button, there was a small body, struggling for life on its back.  I knew what I must do.  I took my thumb - for with that digit I could exert the maximum pounds per square inch, and the thumb also has fewer nerves it seems than my other fingers and I was feeling a little sensitive about the while Doi-Suthep-no-murder thingy - and I pressed down on its entire being until it was still.

I made sure not to press too much, or my computer would power down.

I picked up the cadaver between said thumb and middle finger and deposited it in the wastebasket on top of my used dinner containers from Cafe Metro downstairs.

Now, some may find me cruel.  Or heartless.

The way I see it, it’s either him or me.  Him or me.  And I have a family to feed.  He’s a bug.  Alone, way above his altitude, far from home, and ostensibly looking for a fight.

Well, he found one.

photo:  tux-penguin