Balloons as a base

Each night was as particular to me as if it were an entire phase of my existence. I was metamorphosing. I grew completely tame with all the fascinating possibilities of the present.

I was in control of myself, disciplined and sure. I was a man perhaps. Perhaps I had been a man all along, despite my hirsute tendencies. A strong man, a big man, with a preposterous destiny. I was not the first to make my way in the world.

Looking back now, I think I would have been happier had I stayed in the forest, but then there are other interests to hold the mind than happiness. I would say it has been an inspired life, raised up by a man shining a light into the sky.

A great man, a man who owned much electricity and tossed it into the sky to write truths that are like metal in the bellies of the clouds, in my belly as well.

What I had not learned as yet, and could not have guessed, was the value of a dollar. It was struggle enough to keep up with why the big trucks ran at night through the trees on the roads, why the towers blinked their lights over everything, why the streets were paved and why there were curbs and sidewalks and even what a street light was or the language of signs the people of the road spoke.

I did not know yet that the people of the road and the people of the houses were not the same people, but sometimes people who had come from far away for no good reason, just to visit from other equally plentiful places.

It was a long while before I learned of the law and that I had no legal rights to the corner of the field, no capital at all. I became very concerned with money, what it looked like, where it came from, how to receive some in payment for services.

The farmers paid me to move heavy things and to watch over the cattle at night. I was the night shepherd. They paid me with money left beneath a rock on the fence post. They gave me whatever they had at hand. Sometimes they gave me apples. (I wept from their kindness, I couldn't stop myself. Just to have a message sing out for me alone...)

With the few dollars I'd gathered, I walked right off the street in a pair of jeans I'd found in the woods and a plastic wind breaker from the trash. I went to the barber shop and gestured frantically at my face, trying to make clear how important it was that they shave me before anyone noticed.

The barber stood chagrined at the counter, saddled with impossible duties but up to the task. He gestured towards a chair, then tossed a towel easily on his shoulder.

He covered me with a sheet and I fell asleep almost at once. I had never been swaddled before. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see myself in the mirror, couldn't bear the horrible presence of my own gaze. When I awoke, the barber was buttoning a shirt over my chest. My friend from the field stood by smiling. My skin itched all over.