There is a narrow alley between our home and the one beside us.
One person can walk through it, but two people side by side cannot. This little passageway is cluttered by fire escapes, locked bicycles, as well as garbage and recycling bins. It’s not unusual to see a man, some shaggy creature forced to the margins, rooting through the garbage for empties.
Last night I could hear bottles clinking. Distant at first–like jade wind chimes in some Japanese tableau– but slowly, erratically, they grew closer. It was probably near 10 at night, and Rachelle and I were lying in bed. Not yet asleep, but having finished all our responsibilities for the day, were devolving in front of some anesthetizing tv. Liminal, almost between states. The window, covered by a blind, was open, and the man who was going through the garbage was no more than six feet from me. If we leaned toward one another and stretched out our fingers, we would have touched.
It was an uncanny, intimate moment.
I could hear him. His movements and energy, his wordless muttering, the weight of his presence, these were all things that I experienced. It felt like some figuration of the ancient past. Before language. When there was only the physical act of fulfilling need after need.
And what if he did not find what he needed?
What if that was no longer enough?
In the next room, a toddler who calls his teachers Mr. Blueberry and Ms.Cookie lies sleeping. I am feeling protective, so Rachelle and I stay still and quiet, waiting for the bottle collector to move on to the next yard, for this weird tension to disintegrate… Slowly the clinking of the bottles begins to drift away, becoming ghostly in the night, and Rachelle and I lie there, both quiet for much longer than we might have expected.
