STRAYED MIND

At around one thirty in the morning the doorbell rang. So I put on my bathrobe, grabbed a stout stick, and went downstairs to investigate. A crazed homeless man was settling down in the lit portico of our apartment building, grunting and mumbling to himself, and enjoying a cup of coffee. As could be noted through the curtain of the window in the front door. I observed him discreetly for a few moments without making him being aware of my presence, then went back upstairs. It was raining fairly steadily, the foghorns were blowing, he was filthy and not dressed for the weather, and it was cold outside.
I was in pajamas and a bathrobe, not enthusiastic about either his presence there or the idea of chasing him out into the elements, and not keen for a ruckus in the middle of the night.

It's a San Francisco kind of thing.

And, of course, filth and rain.


Pointless to call the police. From their point of view, if he was not killing anyone, and tucked away out of trouble, why shift him? Problem not so much solved as shelved.


One is conscious of one's vulnarabilities when garbed in nothing but jammmies, bathrobe, and house slippers. Or at least aware that one may not be optimumly dressed to deal with the madness beyond the door. Where things are cold, wet, and stark raving bonkers. There's an unpredictability there which at one thirty in the morning one might not want to face.

And, for some reason, quite inexplicably, one remembers purchasing a lovely casket of Peaty Kentucky -- a limited edition product from Scandinavian Tobacco which one has had the good fortune to sample at work because there was an opened container -- but one doesn't know where the devil one put it. It obsesses the mind; logically it would be somewhere within reach, a lower shelf perhaps. That rusty orange of the lacquered container, stark black lettering, it should be clearly visible. Even amidst the clutter.
Where the devil could it be?

One will simply have to buy a second exemplar.
To also remain unopened for years.
And gloated over.



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