Washington Union Station is a dreamscape. It is a great Beaux Arts temple to transportation, of course. Within its great barrel vaulted confines flow the endless tides of travelling feet. Some are going someplace, or coming from some place, some are shopping, some just milling about to spend some time, just moving in place. Today I watch the brief surge of passengers just in from a ride aboard the Acela from New York, a business-class breaker of white hitting the beach. Through the mist of them walks a homeless man, at cross purposes from the tide. He has such a magnificent swagger. It's not an air, not pretense. That's just the way he walks. What a stride! I love that swagger.
Manhood is mystic.
Most people think I am truly off, or crazy, to describe men as mystical; to believe they are spirit-beings, possessing different realms, and being possessed by them, passengers in various planes of existence from one moment to the next.
Yes, I do believe manhood, and men, are mystical; shamanic shards of glass and wind.
Sometimes I build little altars to them, men, that is. Spirit boxes filled with bits of things left behind. I spend days sometimes making these little altars. Little spirit boxes filled with an old well worn, sweat-stained baseball cap or some other centerpiece to focus my worship. It's like trying to catch fire in a bottle.
But mostly at night I watch them sleeping, their chests rising and falling with spirit-breath's, being reborn again and again through the night. I watch silently in the darkness and the warmth of their presence.
The windwalkers.
