Under the Bridge

I saw the man under the bridge this morning. He was very drunk with a disheveled afro and grey eyes. He wore a black scarf, that covered a red parka that had seen better days.

I've seen this man before. He stands underneath the bridge from dawn til dusk, though I don't know where he sleeps.  When he's feeling particularly lucid, he'll walk out to the cars that stop at the nearby stoplight. I've observed him knocking on car windows, making unintelligible hand gestures and spouting gibberish.

Sometimes, with a plastic bag covering his hand, he'll traverse the 20 feet of sidewalk under the bridge picking up the enormous piles of dog shit left by the white people who have slowly but surely gentrified this area. As he stoops down, he mutters the same thing over and over again: "weed and seed. weed and seed." 

One time, while I was at the local beer distributor, he was there buying malt liquor. He kept apologizing to the owner, as he counted and recounted the $3.29 in nickels and dimes and pennies.  "2.20, 2.21, 2.22...2.27...2...2...I'm sorry, I'm sorry, 27 plus the 25 is.....let me start over." The owner told him to take his time. It was clear that this was a routine between the two of them. The junkie and his dealer. 

 My boss at the coffee store told me yesterday that he's letting me go, his New Years gift to me. I've been late to work three times in the last month, a result of terrible train service on the east side, but he doesn't care. Fortunately  my pay is on a 4 week lag, so I'll still get money until early February but it's a crushing blow. 

To make matters worse, no one's bought any of my paintings in almost a year, and my work has become horribly stale. My reason from being in New York, my art, seems to be becoming ever less relevant.  

I went to a bar with some of my friends from college to ring in 2013. I spent  over $200, hooked up with a dark haired Jewish princess, talked about Goethe, and explained how fiduciary responsibility on the national level is actually inextricably linked to pointillism, the painting style made famous by George Seurat. I'm not quite sure how I connected the dots on that one, but it left me feeling both smug and exceedingly cheap. 

I didn't budget my money very well, and did not have enough for cab fare. It took me two hours to get  from downtown Brooklyn to the Bronx on the 4 train going local.

As I trudged home, stumbling over myself, I passed under the bridge.  I swayed back and forth, my black scarf and red parka barely keeping me warm, and I nearly tumbled over a pile of dog shit. "Weed and seed," I muttered to myself, "Weed and seed."