The divinity of man

By the end of the year, I should be decent at guitar

“I’ve never strummed on a guitar. Don’t think I’ve got the dexterity to pull of a Johnny Cash or the genius to be a Hendrix,” he said as he tapped on the cigarette as ashes dropped from heights to the pedestrians down below. “One of my friends is a musician. Goes into the city every now and then to play in front of a crowd of folks that… Yeah, he’s got a good thing going for him.”

The man by his side stretched out his fingers to the half-burnt, half-alive cigarette. It exchanged hands.

“You’ve got a lot going for you too, you know?” Andre said.

“Don’t we all. We’ve got A, B and C all locked in place but… but a man dreams. When I’m all alone I dream of concerts and skills and lives I’ve never lived. Don’t you have things you wish you could have done?” Moses asked with his hands dangling off the edge.

“Yeah. I’ve got ‘em.”

“What did you wanna do?” Moses said.

Andre took one puff. Exhaled. Another. Exhaled then turned to Moses and said, “when I was a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist. I wanted to dig around for dinosaurs, ancient cities.”

“And how did that turn out?”

Andre tossed the dead butt off the ledge and watched it fly down to the curb down below.

“I’ve not found any dinosaurs or ancient cities… yet. Just a matter of time.”

“Yeah. Just a matter of time.”

Moses walked back into the apartment with the city fading into the background. Black sofa surrounded by empty white walls dropping down to wooden floors that held up one desk with nothing but a computer and a notebook on it.

From his pocket Moses pulled out a pen and dotted into the notebook.

“Another line for the story? What is it now?”

“Just a matter of time. I like that. Just a matter of time. Seems like with most things in life, it’s always just a matter of time.”

“What about learning that instrument?”

“I ordered a guitar from Amazon. Cheap, simple thing. Gonna get my friend to go into the trenches with me. Just a matter of time before I’m playing at shows... just like him.”

Andre laughed then walked to the desk to peek into the notebook.

“All these lines going into the story?”

Moses sat on the couch. “Most of them. Some of them… I don’t know. Some of them just seem like things I needed to hear. Sometimes people say things that can change a life and they don’t even know they’ve done it. I like capturing those moments. You do it, too.”

“Which line is mine? I mean, other than what you’ve just written down.”

He kicked off his shoes and put his feet on the couch. “Does it matter? The point with it is that you don’t get to know. If everyone knew they had the divine in them then we’d stop being… we’d stop being normal. Each of us would fall into delusions of grandeur. Me trying to be a rockstar and you — you trying so hard to be a guru archaeologist. You don’t want that. It’s best that the divinity express itself while we’re unaware.”

Andre flipped through the notebook giving keen interest to the doodles on the edges of the pages. Faces, clocks, hands, clouds. He brought it closer to his eyes as though to investigate a deep mystery.

“Didn’t know you could draw.”

“I dabble. Sometimes I get bored of writing and there aren’t enough screens here to keep my mind fixated on anything external.”

“Whose faces are these?” Andre asked.

“Memories mostly. People from my childhood. People I see out in the streets. No one in particular. The faces mean nothing unless I know the person.”

He placed it back down on the desk and walked over to the couch and sat by Moses’ feet.

“Give me an example of something someone said that changed your life.”

“Hmmm!” Moses rubbed his chin.

“I used go for these meetings. Every Saturday I’d go sit with these men who felt that they — they felt they were too soft for the world. Too sensitive. We’d just talk. Try and find ways to be more assertive, more confident, more comfortable in our own skin. I guess this place would be the worst sample group for my theory because the men there were actively trying to figure themselves out but… but they… I don’t know. It was hard for them, too. Hard for them to see through their ego. Hard for me, too. That’s why I was there. Anyway, one guy came once. He hadn’t been around for a while.”

He sat back up.

“He was a big guy. A bear of a man with a sunny disposition. Always a cheeky smile on and some naughty jokes in his back pocket. He wasn’t… he wasn’t all that cheery on that day. We would go clockwise. Everyone got a chance to speak and when it came to his turn…” he looked right at Andre. “…usually, he’d give a simple run down of his week. Everyone knew he hated his job, everyone knew he hated the people he had to deal with. But that was the point — we got to talk it out together so the sensitivity doesn’t spill onto anyone else. On that particular day, he started off slow. Started off with a tear.”

Andre leaned back and Moses inched closer.

“You kinda know where things are going when someone starts off with a tear. Usually death… it’s usually death. But it wasn’t.” He put his arm over the couch and got even closer to Andre. “Ever imagine that there are things worse than death?”

“I can imagine — being paralyzed. Being paralyzed might be worse than death. I just might off myself if I ever got paralyzed,” he gave a forced laugh.

Moses backed off by a few inches.

“Got a friend that did the same a few years ago…

“Oh shit! I’m sorry…”

“Though he wasn’t paralyzed. Got amputated after a failed suicide attempt. Yeah. Some things are worse than death but… but the thing that he told us — you know, his story actually wasn’t as important as how he ended it. He said — he said all the things you think are problems are actually not problems at all. All the things you think are problems are not problems at all.”

Andre stared at the wall and said, “you don’t say things like that unless something huge went down. What was it? What happened?”

“It really doesn’t matter. Just think about it. The things we worry about the most. The things we mull over, lose sleep over — most of them are actually not a big deal. I used to say that those meetings were more powerful than church. More powerful cause we’d have people just trying to understand why things are the way they are. Why they are the way that they are. People never really do that but when they do… when they do they start to speak in tongues. They reveal parts of themselves and the universe that we overlook. Every Saturday it seemed as though I got to hear exactly what I needed to hear. That’s why I say that those meetings are a bad sample of my theory; the divinity of man.”

Andre reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. He got to his feet and walked to the window. Before opening it, he lit the cigarette.

“Want one?”

“On the balcony. I’ll share that with you.” Moses followed him out.

They stood at the balcony with the cigarette exchanging hands after each puff. The highways were packed with evening traffic and the streets down below were a puzzle of pieces moving back and forth. Moses looked down at them and said,

“every single one of them probably hates where they came from and resent where they are going but only a few of them will do something about it. Funny how the world is filled with resentful, unfulfilled people.”

“I’m nothing like that. Got a job I like and a friend like you.”

“Yeah, you’re more optimistic than most. Sometimes I wish I had your disposition.”

Andre raised his hand to the sky. The smoke rose up to the heavens.

The two stood before the city as gods before a congregation.

Ding dong went the doorbell. Moses handed Andre the cigarette and walked back into the apartment.

“Who is it?”

“Delviery for a Moses Chile.”

“Okay. Come in," Moses said. He moved to the door as Andre remained on the balcony smoking. Moses soon joined him a large box.

“What is that?”

“An attempt at reaching for better days.”

Out of the box, Moses pulled out a guitar. He tried to strum it but it was all out of tune. Andre gave a cheeky smile.

“How long do you think it’ll take to play a few chords?”

“I’m guessing if I can play around with it for an hour everyday I should be decent by the end of the year.”

“Decent, huh!? You’re sounding really optimistic there, Moses,” Andre laughed.