The Walking Man

Lost among the many things President Ronald Reagan did to America during his eight years as president was one particular budget cutting measure.  Perhaps in these days of fiscal austerity it is good to look back to the past as a guide if for no other reason then to teach us about the ignorance of our as of yet "unmade" decisions.  Prior to Ronald Reagan you didn't see many homeless people on the streets.  Those that existed tended to live outside of society.  They were the "Hobos" of yesteryear.  America had a system of mental hospitals and for better or worse these institutions cared for and accommodated the nations mentally ill.  Reagan wanted to reduce corporate taxes and to find the money for this he had to cut the welfare state.  The result was the de-funding and closing of most of the nations large public mental hospitals.  The theory was that mental health care could be more efficiently provided by private companies.  Of course this only works with those that have the exorbitant income to pay for them.  Those that did not, were out of luck.

It is against this back drop that America exists today. Anyone driving around the nations cities from small to large can't help but notice the collection of characters who populate the streets.  They wander seemingly lost in their own worlds.  They mumble to and frighten those that pass them by.

Even my own little world is not exempted from this.  It is a little suburban town outside a midsized city.  A few streets intersect punctuated by a vacant strip of stores on main street ringed in by the big box stores and fast food restaurants that replaced them. It is no different than most of America yet  in my world, I recognize some of the people that haunt its streets.  Every time I pass them I marvel at their sight wondering what world they see and how different it is from my own.  I give them names.  I am not sure if it is the result of an effort to humanize or dehumanize them.  I suppose I could stop and ask them their real name but that would cross an invisible line that separates my world from theirs.

One man I see consistently I call The Walking Man.  I is curious in that his body is always bent way back as if to counter balance his legs.  He walks like a fierce wind is blowing against his body his legs strutting out in front of him.  I have seen him everywhere.  I never know where he is coming from or where he is walking to but he walks and walks.

Another man is far more curious.  He is an elderly man and he wears a baseball hat and rides a bicycle with a curved center bar, his hands elevated.  He has a basket in the front filled with curiosities and rides hunched over in a determined manner.  His face is unshaven and his farmer's jacket dirty.  He often sits at intersections for hours his legs straddling his bicycle and his feet ready to pedal.  Despite this, he goes no where.  I saw him yesterday in a grocery store parking lot.  He was in the middle of the lot almost motionless.  His eyes followed me as I drove by and parked a short distance away.  From my rear view mirror I watched as he extended his arm out holding what appeared to be a rubber chicken.  He waved it in the air for over ten minutes as if he was encountering an invisible force. Moments later he road his bicycle 100 feet and paused again to sit and watch.

Sometimes I wonder if chicken man knows something I don't.  What if he is some kind of a force in the universe and his very existence keeps the rest of the world turning.  What if all our lives were some how protected by that dangling rubber chicken?

There is a fine line between sanity and insanity and I am convinced we are all perilously close to the edge.  Years ago I remember a man who worked in my office building in Washington D.C.  He seemed ancient.  It was as if retirement had some how come and gone and he had been recycled to the working world.  He pushed a cart around hunched over and never spoke to anyone.  Deep within the recess of my soul I always fear becoming that man.  No, I must retire early and avoid that fate.  I don't want to be hunched over and pushing a cart on and off the elevators for the rest of my days.

A man I have seen more recently emerges from an unknown office in the afternoon and starts to do laps around my floor.  He is over weight, in his 60's and wears red suspenders, his belly jutting outward.  I don't think he is insane but he could be.  He walks around and around like a gerbil in a wheel. He reminds me of the opossum I watched not long ago in a cage at a zoo.  The creature walked back and forth on a branch constantly retracing its steps.  Hours passed and it kept walking, never deviating from its course.  Perhaps it was insane.  Maybe it was the seclusion that drove it mad.

In a way we are all in a cage.  It is a cage constructed by our own doing yet it restricts us like the opossum.  It takes the form of jobs, family and debt.  We build it piece by piece, year by year.  It is the sum of all we are and it is both our prison and our sanctuary.  At any moment the bars of the cage can become too tight, too confining.  We either turn within our selves and shrink away or we cry out wondering if anyone will hear. Perhaps in truth we are all merely steps away from becoming the Walking Man.

There is a German movie called Run Lola Run.  The film chronicles the life of Lola and how the circumstances of her life change if she is delayed by a few minutes.  How normalcy can become disaster by the smallest change.  It is like the feeling we all get when viewing an auto accident.  We wonder if we had not paused that extra few moments in the morning delayed by some inconvenience, would we have been there?   Scientists say that the recent earthquake in Japan slowed the Earth's rotation by 1.8 microseconds.  Is it possible that in this instant the fates of all of us have changed?  Did they change for the better or for the worst?  In our lives, have we taken one step closer to or one step further away from becoming The Walking Man?   Only time will tell.