Frost Reloaded
After much mental debate, a traveler makes tough choices on the winding walk of life whose tone is gloomy, sorry, sigh, regrets. He leaves the possibilities of the road not chosen behind ...
There was a mood of quiet at the bar. Neither the bartender nor the few people spoke. The juke box was playing a slow song. Near the counter, a kitten was boxing with a cellophane ball. The kitten, energetic and furiously playful, was the liveliest thing in there. The place was sort of dead, no turning back on one´s failed life or death.
"Not a bad try."
The dark man ordered for both of them while the driver trying to settle his long legs under the table just stared at him. He didn't dare to say a word, though he gave him a fuck-you smile. What followed was another tension running high when the stranger looked fiercely at the driver, making him feel he could read his mind. He lit the cigarette he'd been toying with, unable to think of a thing to say as an addition to the fellow driver having the same trouble. Posing made no sense. Not anymore. Was it all a pose? Two men eating, some men drinking, including the bartender. They were not even Chinese. Now and then the black bag stole their sight. No one talking. The music. The kitten. The whole atmosphere ticked weird. There seemed to be nothing Chinese about the bar.
"You said prison by three o'clock, right?"
Hearing that, everybody at the counter came to life, turning to the table, staring fixedly at the two men who were just about to finish their meals. There was a hush across the room. A glass dropped, breaking to pieces. Fear. And suddenly a movement in the corner. Oh, just a spider in the gathering gloom.
"Right."
"The pizza was really good. By the way, which do you prefer, onion or mushroom?" The driver tried to strike up a conversation, because he got a feeling that his client became communicative more and more, that he was not entirely unfriendly as he might seem. "God, I'm stuffed. I gotta pee. How about you? Boy, I gotta pee!" His efforts came to nothing. Spent in vain.
Leaving a twenty-dollar bill on the table, the dark man rose abruptly and said like a tough man, "Let's get out of here, now!" making it fast to the door.
"But I'm serious, I really...fine, easy, easy. I guess it's not that urgent." The driver lowered his eyes, bit his lip and nodded mournfully, convincing himself, "What a fucken asshole! And I call this person sir!"
On the way to the prison, upon the stranger's request, they listened to the radio howling songs of love and guilt. About half a mile away, they could see the outlines of the prison big and impersonal and gray. They were both impressed.
"Drop me off right here."
"Sure." "How long have you been driving clients?"
"Crazy?"
"I mean this job is not your cup of tea? You talked about art, Chinese art. You're an artist? Literature, theatre, music, the Fine Arts? No, you're not a common driver, are you?"
"Bingo!"
There was a strange twist in the driver's face, something he could not hide however hard he tried, something that the dark man himself knew too well, a sort of nostalgia, lost horizons.
The "banana" sped off, no matter the smell of the law was in the air. A police car stood some thirty feet away from the place. The cops were either busy or asleep.
It was a paradox. When you see a man with a bag walking like that, usually he leaves the huge, perfectly walled building-complex behind, enjoying the first moments of freedom, thinking of the "paradise" lost and regained, feeling happy, feeling lonely. But this man went in the opposite direction, toward the prison. He walked on and on, dragging his feet along the unknown road. It reminded of Robert Frost's lines of verse,
"...two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by
and that has made all the difference."
No, certainly he did not look happy about his choice, slowly approaching the complex. Perhaps there was no choice. Nonsense. There's always a choice even if there seems to be "no" choice. Quite frankly, it may be poor, very miserable. The closer he got, the more air his lungs needed.
The imprint of resignation in his face and walk as seen at the railway station did not change at all, not a bit. It was a curious face. An intelligent face, and a lonely one, very lonely. He walked like a desperate madman determined to rob a bank without wanting money, struggling for survival no more, the most dangerous type. A disaster had swept over his life destroying most of it, but he'd survived. Now he felt he was painfully alive, so alive.
It hurt and healed. It was life. When it hurts and heals, it's always life. Giving up and going on seemed to him to be the same old song. But he walked toward a life he'd known once, long ago, before he'd lived another life with another family that was no more. He knew he could not back away, he didn't want to. There was something left in his life, the love he'd always kept, something worth living but too far away, something he'd been looking for, something he'd never known how to get back, something the law had taken away from him. Yet things changed.
“The Road Not Taken”, felt through by Robert Frost, is a poem that argues for the importance of our choices, both big and small, since they shape our journey through life. It can be interpreted as an anthem of individualism and nonconformity. Whether we like it or not, we are in this mess together, however apart!
The roads represent the problem of decision-making. We suffer because of our choices and decisions. As human beings, however alienated, whatever the circumstance, we find ourselves in such situations at every step in our lives. Out of the available options, we have to choose the one that MAY take us to our destination, not unscarred.
My underlying message is that individuals should make choices in their lives based on their own paths and their own inclinations because it is almost never possible to turn back and try the other path. There is always a moral to teach, a lesson of life to be learned. And yes, in this particular case, I am the Moron of the story, with high morale, facing challenges with courage and spirit, jaws crack, balls drop, drums, or heads, roll.
These challenges do polish me and bring the worst out of me, should be the best, and become my friend, misery loves company, and reach to great depths, instead of heights, in my life! Have I chosen avoiding the popular rat-race? Yes, sort of. Unhinged, out of control, not really, I have opted for the option that breaks fresh grounds, not interested in choosing a much-trodden path.
In conclusion, I am encouraging you, my precious readers, to take the road less traveled with me while exploring my varied Substack and having more fun on the crazy roller-coaster a la Beavis and Butthead, DO NOT try this at home!
Now, the dilemma of you standing at a road with diversion symbolizes the real-life situation where you have to take the tough decision of supporting my work without killing the author who just informs, entertains, but hardly persuades ...
Faith, Trust, and Doubt. In the harsh world of the Road I have become, everything depends on trusting or distrusting each other. On one level, there is a constant tension regarding whether or not you should trust anyone you meet on the road. Some people are cannibals and rapists, while others will still steal to survive.
You could not decide what is right or wrong for you, you are on the road!
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