Lune

There he sat on a low ledge to a large window. He was an alien. Maybe he always was or always would be, but at that moment he certainly was. What the hell were these kids doing, eating lunch and engaged in some young people game he didn't know the rules for? So he stared at nothing or he read nothing or he became nothing. For several days this was so, and every day at lunchtime he tried to hide from observation by climbing into a window. The struthious and painful. There was no stoicism, but numbness. Hermes was not happy. He had capitulated his noble savage campaign, and was being socialized with the leaders' children, except it didn't work. He was living in a suburban satellite city, but it may as well have been the moon. In fact, he'd surely prefer the moon. The skateboarding kept him anchored in some sense of self, some sense he would not relinquish. Strangely, he did not identify with music. He didn't like lyrics and he only listened to a few things for comic value that quickly dissipated. He smoked cigarettes when he wasn't allowed, he smoked ganja when he could, and he could often. He tried to die alive in suburbia, except his heart would not give.

A young woman came up to the window ledge and sat down. She asked him some questions he couldn't remember, and extended some warmth or indication of the amicable. She was quiet like the ghost he was trying to become, but more comfortable and translucent. Then they knew each other. He would stop going to school again, but for the time she was a muse. Someone once said that Hermes had done a lot of things but not truly lived very much. This was maybe true even then. When he saw skateboarders he felt like he was still part of some tribe, but the wild antics of his heart were caged here. Social laws were well established. He was a visigoth, a savage, a magician. There was no place for him here, where the temples were chain restaurants and the odysseys were to Disneyworld. He was bestowed with an anachronistic heart. The muse's name was Estelle.

Estelle made a challenging invitation to visit her at the beach while she was there with her family. Hermes already knew the secret that to live as a man, one needs only clean socks, underwear, water, and occasional food. An angel of prophecy gave him a gift of coins, to follow his heart. So he embarked on a journey to the sea, with nothing more than he could easily carry on his shoulder. In making space, he cast off the world that typically rest upon that shoulder. If the world fit into a backpack, he had no qualms to bear the weight of it. He made the journey with two college girls who overestimated his age when they picked him up on the side of the road. They were drinking wine coolers, and they were laughing more than any situation he could understand warranted. He was glad to get out of the car.

It was early evening and he hadn't found anywhere to rest. A friend should have been around, and probably was, but this was before telepathy & cell phones. He and Estelle sat on a bench in a park late into the night. They talked and smiled and he exhibited every nervous antic in the spectrum of the young man lacking confidence. Somehow it was warm and magical, even if it was uncomfortable. Lucioles, lightning bugs were his mates and he was home wherever they were.