Purple coat lady

I see her again at the corner. Same purple coat, same rolling backpack and hand bag next to her. She walks back and forth, back and forth, never getting on a bus, never walking into an office. I ran into her the other night in the Cultural Center. I was marching toward some lecture, she was marching toward a warm seat. We show up in many of the same places, both of us in our long coats and toting worldly goods for the day. But the subtle differences make a world of difference. One of us looks like our steps have a purpose, the other actually has one.

On some days the differentiation is slim. I could dissect and twitter myself endlessly, trying to outline a life but find it to have been thin on purpose as I put head to pillow in the end. What goes through her head, I wonder? I notice her at her corner just after I finished playing chicken with a cabbie who proves to not possess the stones to send me into the afterlife. I'd like to stay with her, on that corner, pacing next to her, to see what it's like. I'm sure my head would not be empty at all but would soon fill with demons a-plenty. The tide of mental pollution I push away with purpose, a prayer and a job title would rise and flood my mind. The rush might drown reason but also cover a multitude of sad and sorry-smelling sins.

"I wish he'd just get off the pity pot, wipe his ass and live - plenty of people's father's get cancer. I hope he remembers to give me my book back.

I wonder how she is today. The furnace just go replaced, next the roof needs insulation, the well needs to be re-dug and the bathroom walls - shit the bathroom walls.

If that bitch bugs me about my weight again I'll scream! Don't people know how rude it is to comment about another person's weight? Jees!

I shouldn't have said that, or that or that. Shit it's 9 am and I haven't managed to do a single thing right today."

Soon enough my simple bag would also spill over with the detritus of life that must be carried around. What would the world look like? Would it be more frightening or would it in fact prove to be a simpler landscape of impressions and associations? Absent of the details of the day I could wander in a city of my own thoughts - lost. I want to know, for real, but don't have the time to find out.

Past purple coat lady I push up the street to the office building where I work. She didn't start out as the woman who wandered around downtown, I'm sure. Did she start like me and simply find the slippery tide of depression and confusion too tempting? Hard to say. That fall lands us all in different places somewhere between loss of appetite to loss of mind. I run into her at a corner sometimes. Out of habit or concern she looks both ways before crossing the street. Me, I've stopped bothering to look.