Monday reminded me why I am a misanthrope.

So, on my way to work, I found a homeless man lying on the sidewalk. He was conscious, and breathing, but he didn't respond when I asked him if he was alright.

The obvious thing to do was to call emergency services and tell them. But the thing about this....

The thing about this is, no one else stopped to help this guy. No one at all. I saw at least fifteen people drive past, and three walked by -- one on a cell phone -- and while I was trying to help the guy out, waiting for paramedics, they all went the other way.

I can't know why. But I can guess.

And my guess is that they didn't want to deal with him because he was homeless.

It just makes me feel that my misanthropy is justified.

Dreams again.... I am remembering them more often than I used to.

And that's good. I found my muse, last night. I'd really began to miss her.

:D

I met my demon in Beggar's Town. It's been with me for a long time, but that's where we met. It's a bit of a story, so let's go back to the child-gangs I used to run with.

In my earliest childhood, before I can remember clearly, my parents shared a house in the City. This, unfortunately, didn't last. My father 'rescued' my brother and I from my mother. The circumstances were unclear, but apparently she was given to drink.

No one really explained much of this to me, of course. It was simply that she was cast out, and my father assumed control. Until we had to move to Beggar's Town, and he found some other woman to distract him when he wasn't busy with other things. Engineering. Work. Drugs.

She, of course, didn't care for interlopers against whatever fortune my father might some day be worth again (she'd already squandered what little he had, not that anyone in Beggar's Town had much of anything to begin with). So when she was able to produce an heir of her own, my true family became the child- gangs I ran with.

This wasn't to say I couldn't sleep in a house -- I could. But it wasn't a home.

And it was then, running with my friends, that I met my demon. I found him the first -- and thankfully last -- time I was stabbed.

An argument that got out of hand, a prank, a plan to steal -- of all things -- rock salt. And a knife was involved. Why? I don't know.

It wasn't the first time I was in trouble with the law. Our names were taken. We all lied, except for me -- I couldn't. I was injured. My gang leader, Jack, abandoned me.

That was when I realized I was alone.

Except, I wasn't. From that day, the seed of hate grew in my heart. Hate that someone would turn against me. Hate that they would take me so far, and then leave me, hurt. But what could I do? So I bottled it up and ignored it.

It wasn't until years later that I realized where my friend came from. By then it was just a continual urge to do wrong. I never understood it, and perhaps, I still don't. Sensei says I should listen to my demon, but only as a compass for what is wrong, and what I should not do.

The scars we bear, one supposes.

Not guaranteed to be actual.

Every so often, as the mind must, it returns to the past. The past is where we are all from. We may think we live in the moment, but the moment is finite, and instantaneous. We may wish to live in the future, but what we wish is under no obligation to pass. We live in the past, because it shapes our now, which determines our then.

When I was younger, running with the others through the wild streets of the place that we called Beggar's Town, everything seemed simpler. More savage, dangerous compared to where I live now. And it was that way, but there was an undeniable freedom in life then.

Simple acts of petty thievery, fighting among the other child-gangs. Occasionally being lucky enough to be favored by a true gang, the dangerous ones.... But inevitably, even if we are creatures of the past, we must hurtle blindly into the future.

We had a darkness and a light, then. Perhaps they are there still, simply in shapes I can't recognize. There is darkness and light in everything....

The temple was the heart of Beggar's Town, even though it was right on the edge, between us and the City. The real City, not the shanty-town of petty squabbles and limitless freedom that we called home. People from the City, beggars, bankers, thieves, aristocrats.... Everyone went to the Temple. The City had more temples, but none so old or generous as the Temple.

On the holy days, rice would be given out, and sometimes bread. As children, it was easy enough to scare up a cheap meal just for sweeping the steps for some elderly monk. Or perhaps run buckets of water to fill a freshly cleaned basin. It was a cunning trap, in many ways.

It was there that I actually learned to write, surrounded by the dust and sun at the top of the hill, in a crowded little room with a monk who insisted I copy exactly. There was no punishment for failure, merely no reward. And if I wanted to validate my hours at the Temple with a bowl of broth and rice, I had to learn.

So I did, not even realizing the truth of what I did.

Even the gangs that gave us errands, our darkness against the Temple's light.... Even most of them didn't know how to read. Of course, no monk knew where a good fence was. Or what some wealthy visitor from the City to the Temple wouldn't notice missing from their purses and pockets.

Bounding between these two forces we were shapes, slowly but surely. We had little power, ultimately, us creatures of the past. But the thieves were living in the moment. Trying to, anyway. The monks were living in the future. They saw our potential, and forgave any darkness we carried as children.

The gangs didn't care what we had done, or where. Merely what we were doing for them then.

So the shape of things changed.

As they must.

Enough time has passed that I've left that darkness, that light. I go to another temple, in another town.

But this temple is not so bright as the Temple. And this town is not so dark as the one I grew up in. Still, has anything changed, or is the story the same? The darkness not so dim, the brightness dulled....

Does anything change? Can it?

Of course not. Because I am a creature of the past. We all are.

I hate being off my meds. o_o

But, all is well. I am debt free!

I did yardwork for my parents today, and gave the money from it back to them to pay off my phone bill, thus clearing up the last dangling bits of it.

Yay!