The Noble Diner

In a dump of a diner, with unswept floors and paint peeling walls, sits a man with no hopes, no dreams and empty pockets. He carefully nurses a single cup of coffee, painfully realizing that every sip he chokes down is another gulp closer to returning to his voided life. Scattered across the table are couch-residing nickels, barely adding up to a tip for the middle-aged waitress with aged cheeks and saddened wrinkles. He's in no rush to finish, as the rain trickles down the window viewing an isolated world. He takes a sip of his coffee, let's the heat warm his cold soul, and spits it back into the mug so he can lengthen his stay.

They won't be waiting for him to return, sleeping peacefully in their beds, warm with dreams of pleasant gardens. They won't anxiously fear for tomorrow because their innocent ignorance blinds them from that turmoil. And she won't be waiting for him either. She'll reach out in her sleep and feel the heat of his body still radiating off the sheets, and she'll smile at her subconscious security.

But the man, sitting alone at his table, eyes fixated on the nothingness of looking down, he knows the truth. He heard the words in that office, felt the weight of that box full of picture frames and paper clips, saw the door close behind him. The man read the words of all those letters and understood the meaning behind their evictions. And though he struggled to grasp the concept of zero when spoken by the woman at the bank, he inevitably learned of its emptiness.

"If only I...if only they could be spared. I'd give anything to stop them from worrying," the man thought to himself.

Across the window stepped a man, dark as could be. He was dressed importantly, as if his business meeting ran late in to the night. His suit, undamped by the pounding raindrops, was pressed precisely, not a flaw on his immaculate black suit. A red, silk tie was the only color his outfit required. The door swung open effortlessly and he sauntered across the stained tiles on the floor, tipped his hat to the waitress and approached the man.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked as he sat down on the opposite side of the booth without waiting for a response. "Heck of a storm, ain't it?"

"Sure is," the man spoke with peculiar curiosity. He pulled his coffee close to his chest, guarding his only possession. "Do we know each other?"

"On a night like tonight, in a place like this, does it matter?"

For the life of the man, he couldn't decipher his words enough to find flaw. "Guess not. Can I help you?"

"Depends. Sure does look like you could use help though."

"How so?"

"A man, sitting alone in a Hell-hole like this in the dead of night. In a place like this, a person's either hiding from God, or from himself." The man in the suit took off his hat, and placed it on the table beside the mug of coffee. Not a drop of rain fell from his outfit as he crossed his hands together on top of the table. "So which is it?"

"Excuse me?"

"Which is it? You hiding from God, or yourself."

"I ain't hiding from no one. Just can't sleep is all."

"The mind likes to wander," the man in the suit started, "especially as it unrests on the pillow. Wanders off to crazy places, fiddling with thoughts that don't do you no good. It plays tricks on you sometimes. Makes you think of things you don't have no reason to be thinking of."

The man in the suits' eyes pierced through the man on the other side of the booth, looking beyond any message his eyes could portray. He read the man's face and figured the price of his debt, balancing the man's desperation against his morality. A smirk raised the end of his lip before quickly vanishing again.

"Well which is it for you," said the man. "You hiding from God or yourself?"

"I don't," started the man in the suit, "need to hide from anyone, my friend. Right now I am here with you, and when I leave, no one will find me again until I want them to."

"Friend?" said the man. "We're not friends, I've never met you before."

"Oh, but we are friends. You only don't know it yet."

"What makes you think I'd want to be friends with you?"

"Because friends help each other. Friends know exactly what the other person needs. And friends are willing to give that other person exactly what they need for the sake of their friendship." The man in the suit leaned in closer across the table and turned his powerful voice in to a whisper. "And for you, my friend, I'm willing to help."

"How can you help me? You don't know anything about me."

"But I know about them. I know about them sleeping while you're here, hiding from yourself. I know about them being at peace with the world as you sit here and figure out how you can bare to give them the news. I know you fear the Sun rising and the day come anew, because you know the struggle they will bear because of you, will be unbearable."

The man sat in silence, fighting back tears. His face became red hot and a choking cough in his throat throbbed. He began to shiver and sweat at the very thought of his own failures. He thought of their faces, their beautiful, smiling faces, and how he was no longer able to protect them. To shelter them. They depended on him, and he knew he let them down.

"They relied on you," started the man in the suit. "They trusted you. You were supposed to take care of them. But instead you are here. Wasting your own life trying to figure out a plan. But you want to hear the truth? There is none. They will wake up tomorrow and you won't have a plan."

"But if only I could buy some time. I could stall."

"There is no more time. Your time is over."

The man no longer tried to fight back the tears, and they fell from his cheek on to the table. His nose began to water as his shoulders gently convulsed up and down.

"I know," said the man. "I let them down. They don't deserve this. They didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one that failed. They don't deserve to hold the weight of my failures."

"But I can protect them," said the man in the suit. "I can promise you they will never feel worry. They will never have to fear being without. I can offer them the safety and security you couldn't provide."

"You can? And what would you want in return?"

"You know what I want, friend. You knew what I wanted the moment I walked through that door. You knew what I wanted the moment you prayed for my help."

"And you promise me they will be OK?"

"You have my word."

The man in the suit stood up from the table and extended his hand toward the other side of the booth. For the first time he looked gentle, sympathetic. The man took his hand as they began walking out of the diner and on the road to eternity.

"Please just do me a favor," said the man.

"Name it."

"Allow them to forget about me. Make it so they don't even remember me. I don't want them to be sad another day in their lives."

"The final noble act of the damned. Consider it done."

Wow it's been a while

So I guess it's been quite some time since my last post. It's boggling to realize how much time has passed and how much change has occurred. Some good, some bad. Some happy, some painful. But I guess that's life; right when you think you've got it all figured out, have it all mapped out and planned, life swoops in and blows down everything you've built. Because in life, we don't make house out of brick, but rather sticks and straw. Everything in life is temporary. The good, the bad, the happy and the sad, it's all momentary and it's all changing with every tick of the clock.

So what does it all mean? What am I talking about? Ultimately, and honestly, I guess it really doesn't matter. My words can just be an analogy to anyone's life.

What have I learned? I wish I could say something smart, or clever, or insightful. I wish I learned something deep about my life, but I didn't. Or at least nothing I didn't already know. The entire world I envisioned, the entire life I believed would accompany me throughout my days, decided to turn upside down and inside out. In a heartbeat. A broken one at that.

So yea, what else is new? Same old story; boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy loses girl. It's the theme of every other movie, book and story ever told. It happens to us all at some point. The details are insignificant. And the memories? Maybe not insignificant, but simply thoughts. Because a memory is something to look back upon. Something deserving of remembrance. But these aren't, and not because they no longer hold value, but because these thoughts, aren't memorable in the sense that they deserve to be remembered anymore. The weight they carry is so loaded with whys and whatifs and butonlys.

But that's not what this is about, I've rambled myself into a dark corner. This isn't about the past, because it's gone. And this isn't about the future, because you never actually experience it. It's about the right now. The this moment. The split second that it takes to type out each individual l-e-t-t-e-r. That's really all that has any importance. Sure we can plan, and look back, but neither one is tangible. And therefore don't actually exist. If, like a Looney Toons character, I was hit on the head by a falling Acme anvil, and suffered from amnesia, what once was wouldn't exist at all. And what was hoped for wouldn't even be remembered. All I'd be concerned with was, "which way did he go? Which way did he go?"

I had a point...I think. But it's been lost. My point is now lost in the past, so I guess it really doesn't matter anymore. I could try and stabilize my words by coming up with a new point, but that would be so far into the future, it wouldn't matter and I'd never arrive at it. So I guess my point is whatever I'm saying in each and every sentence. And in this sentence my point has completely shifted.

Where am I going? That's the question I thought to write about. Not where I've been. A question necessitating significant pondering about the future. And we all now how I feel about that. But it helps I guess, as a frame of reference. As a direction to follow, and if you change your course midway, well then that's the road you follow. Robert Frost wrote about taking the road less travelled, but always wondered about his choice. I guess that's human nature, questioning every decision you make, wondering how things could have been. But not me. I don't wish I had done anything differently. I've never wished I took that right instead of the left. I've never regretted a single thing in my entire life. And not because everything has turned out peachy, no quite the opposite. And not because I've succeeded and had no mistakes, failures, or sorrows. But because every decision I have ever made, was made, at that exact moment, because it was exactly what I wanted to do. Sure, the emotions of any one moment could cloud the senses of your own morality at times, but isn't that life. The moment. A mistake in the moment isn't really a mistake until that moment passes. That mistake is you. You are the mistake. Because at that moment, you reasoned with yourself how and why your actions, or words, were exactly what you needed to do or say. People are inherently selfish, or at least self preservers of their own health, wealth, happiness and well being. So every action we make at any moment is out of our own good judgement.

Yet regret is a fickle monster, because even after my own reasoning, I still feel regret. Not because I made a mistake, but because doing exactly what I wanted at several important moments in my life has altered the road I was traveling. Maybe for the best, maybe not. Does it all happen for a reason? I doubt it. Can I change any of it all? Not a chance. Would I change it? Since wishes aren't real and fairy tales don't exist, I guess it doesn't really matter.

All that matters is right now. All that matters is what you're reading, which is the future to me. All that matters is what I'm writing, which is the past to you. All that matters is that what's done is done, not to be remembered and not to be forgotten. All that matters is that at this moment I don't know what my point was. And all that matters is that at this moment, you probably don't know what it was either.