Cigarette and Silence: An Exchange

It was an exhausting journey through the emotional swell of opportunity. Opportunity sought, opportunity found, and opportunity lost. I considered the alternatives, but instead I retracted into the solitude I have come to know as home. I sit in this Kaffeehaus and write, as so many before me have done.
--Unknown, found 2004 in Vienna (2. Bezirk - Leopoldstadt)

... Sunrise after a night shaded in the orange glow of the downtown Chicago lamps. It never really goes dark here, and true sleep is hard to come by. I'm in need of temporary comforts. After some time wandering I approach a man, young. He is selling the Sun-Times on the corner of Michigan and Washington. he has something I want, not too much to ask. The simple gift of a half smoked cigarette. He is lazy with his cigarette, disrespectful to those of us who crave the simple pleasure. Flickering by his side, burning away without any regard for its value. Of course he can smoke lazily at this hour, it is too early for his hands to be busy with the exchange of money. He will give it to me, surely he will. I approach. As politely as I can, I ask him if I could bum the rest of his cigarette. He returns a look that clearly says, “Fuck off.” I would have felt the same towards him if I was still concerned with matters of pride. I move on, still in need of temporary comforts.

... I need a new job. Every day sending out resumes. Always the same freak'n excuse, “We're impressed with your skills but just aren't hiring right now. Try back in a few months.” I'm sick and tired of this job, but I need to pay rent. Every morning, wake up at 4am. Drive downtown to pick up the morning papers. Who reads these any more? Sit on the corner of Michigan and Washington for 5 hours straight. “Papers! Get your paper here!” I yell. In the early morning there's rarely a soul around who is interested in this artifact of a dying time. I see men and women walk right by me, reading the news on their Blackberry or iPhone. Another dollar lost to a kid in jeans, there goes another in a suit, and another in a dress, repeat ad nauseam. I sit and smoke. It makes the time bearable. A homeless man approaches me; I get this at least a hundred times a week. I'm sure he needs something, and I'm too bitter about my own situation to care. He asks me for a cigarette and I give him an irritated look. That sends a quick and direct message. He walks away rather quickly, and I feel no remorse. 4 more hours to go.

Bart's People: Time to Feed the Ducks

“The connotators do not fill the whole of the lexia, reading them does not exhaust it. In other words (and this would be a valid proposition for semiology in general), not all the elements of the lexia can be transformed into connotators; there always remaining in the discourse a certain denotation without which, precisely, the discourse would not be possible.”
-Roland Barthes “Rhetoric of the Image” from Image-Music-Text

A new business suit: pressed, clean, and stylish. Truly a signifier of those who are members of western professional work. Those who are respected to make the giant cogs in the system turn. It was under this assumption that a strange little curiosity occurred to me on my morning walk to work.

It was in the early hours of the morning, no later than 7:30AM, when the first mass of workers make their way into their offices. My particular path, running along side of the elevated tracks, is only busy when a load of passengers makes their way off the platform and onto the street. With no trains in sight, the empty sidewalks made for a wonderfully empty stage for this scene to play out.

Enter our actor, a man in a new business suit, briefcase in hand, on his way to what surely would be a day of importance. He was walking briskly to the shelter of the train platform's stairway, seeming to be in a hurry to feed some inner desire. Must be in dire need of a smoke, I thought.

As he approached, a pigeon swooped in next to him, close enough that it certainly would have made me jump. But this man was unperturbed, indeed, he remained calm as another, two more, ten more, then seemingly hundreds more pigeons descended upon his created shelter under the stairway. Framed by the slanted angle of rusting steel support beams, this canvas was painted with angry brush strokes of black and white feathers. So thick was the paint that I completely lost sight of the man for a number of seconds.

Is this some horrific realization of a Hitchcockian nightmare, I wondered?

After what seemed like much too long for a man in a business suit to be surrounded by an army of pigeons, the birds began to settle into place, anxiously shifting from one foot to the other. I saw the man open his briefcase. He pulled out a small plastic container, the kind of thing you would buy peanuts or almonds in. He opened the container and began shaking out pieces of bread, slowly turning until he had made a complete circle.

The pigeons went wild. Jumping on, over, next to, and underneath one another. This was their breakfast, and it was clearly expected. This man was recognized and expected by the pigeons, as if he had been there numerous times before, part of his normal morning routine: 1. Put on a suit 2. Walk to the train station 3. Exit down town 4. Feed the pigeons 5. Enter the office. Simple as that, the kind of thing where if someone asked him if anything interesting happened on his way in, he would casually reply, “Oh you know, the usual.”

The usual. This scene added to the list of meanings for business suit.

Back in Session

On that trip there was beauty in contrast. We came across a Bavarian man, a member of but not integrated into, a small Buddhist temple. This was not yet an adopted home. He was slowly weaving bracelets made of neon colored string; his hands moving automatically freeing his mind for deeper reflection. His body was a detailed story of adaptation to the Thai landscape- a brightly colored rash covering his back, scars on his forearms, and mosquito bites scattered throughout. We chatted for some time in German, after which he handed me a bundle of his bracelets, smiled widely, and told me to go in peace. I wear those bracelets today as a reminder of strength, choice, hope, and an element of longing.