a couple True Stories, and one small Victory

this really happened. when i get off the t, i walk down a street where there is a high school on one side and a children's hospital facing it. each of them have a street lamp that flickers right in front of them. it's pretty spooky. one night last week, i was coming home from the library pretty late, maybe around midnight. i got off at my stop, and a large dude got off behind me. warren street is a pretty busy street, and there are cop cars driving down it every thirty seconds, but when a large dude gets off the streetcar behind you you're always a little uneasy. anyway, he passed me just as we were crossing the street, and i looked up at him. he looked back with this expression that just said "don't worry," and then started walking pretty fast and i know this is illogical but i felt a little like he might be doing it to put me at ease. when he got to the point between the flickering lights, he was about 100 feet ahead of me. he looked up at one, then at the other, and then did this little flick with his right hand - not really a wave, more like a tiny dismissal. the lights stopped flickering, and he looked back at me, smiled, and waved, and then kept walking.

today on my walk home, i found a little dead bird at a bus stop. nothing violent had happened to him, he was just lying there with his little feet up. at first i walked on by and thought about what it meant for there to be a dead bird there. bird flu? west nile? did it just get too cold too fast, and he didn't get out soon enough? is it a sign that i did something wrong? then i realized that it is arrogant to think that a bird died to prove something to you, and that it is wrong to leave a dead bird at a bus stop so i picked up a newspaper and hid him in some grass by a construction site, and then came home and washed my hands because what if it's west nile after all?

then the irish guy across the street invited me in for a beer and i turned him down to write this blog.