11.19.2025

There was a guy hanging out in front of the school. Nonverbal. He wrote messages on the wide sidewalk in baby blue and pink chalk. Some figures were in yellow, like the pips on the i's. The messages were about love, about finding peace in God, about Truth. That sort of thing.

He was out there for a week or more. I saw him twice a day on my walks. By this time I had a routine. Up the big cemetery hill, regulate the breath, cross by the little free library and enter the driveway of the shrouded green house I like with an old VW bus rusting in the carport. Take the not very secret path by Peter Pan preschool where depending on the time of day a kid will be screaming and another one gripping a boat steering wheel and getting nowhere with it. Up another hill past a shrine to a woman with a head covering: forever in our hearts. Then a steeper hill still and a lazy curve and come back out to where you can choose your own adventure by turning left down to the pedestrian bridge over 580 or right and stay in the neighborhood, down Monticello with a soft 'c', past Karateman's house and then there's this big school, an arts academy, I think, and this guy was out there, chalking up the place. He never responded to my g'mornings or nods and he was out there shirtless a couple times. If he'd listened to me at all I might have given him a friendly suggestion to try to keep a shirt on, being in front of a school and all. Take it from me, I'd say, and neither of us would know what I meant.

Well I never gave him that advice on now he's gone. They hosed his ciphers into the street. Maybe that's on me.