There is no good and evil, only good and bad. Laughter is good but it can be evil. Stupidity is evil but it can be good. A visitor comes to Holista for its famed stories of good; the anti tourist furrows his brow at the ever-shared stories of derision. In Holista they give quaint tours of the medieval quarter and warning tours of the Tenderloin.
In Holista a man speaks loudly for no reason other than to hear his own voice. The group laughs for no reason other than to hear their own laughter. On the other side of their apartment window a bum wraps his legs in cardboard boxes.
Melancholic music plays constantly in Holista—not because the people are melancholic, just the opposite. The music is melancholic to take from melancholy its music. Citizens are quiet—they do not laugh too hard. Their soft spoken words contain their laughter like a groove its bass. The wisened old ones tell the story of Greg the Talker whose propensity for words matched his untimely demise, at the hands of another man whose silence was too literal to neighbor Greg’s loudness.
Beyond 200 windows and 200 doorways in Holista lives Sam, who no one, having met him, can forget. Not because, like other memorable individuals, Sam possesses extraordinary wit, or leaves an impression of future greatness. Sam remains in your memory word by word— in the textured sameness of his descriptions, or in the smile with which he greets familiar faces.
Sam the extraordinary ordinary man kicks rocks. Rarely do his eyes recognize a thing, and then only for its faults. He walks away from a party who laughed too easily; they did nothing bad but his instinct warns they might be evil. As he walks past the bum in the cardboard perks up:
“Hey can you spare any change?”
“Yeah man i’ll give you all the money in my wallet”.
Sam’s eyes drift to the building across the street and he mumbles.
“I feel somehow dirty. Does $10 redeem me?… forgive me father for i have sinned… it’s been however many years since i was a teenager. I’m not a good person but i cannot fight my instincts. why should fun disgust me? nobody wronged me, but here is all the cash i have in my wallet.”
“Thank you”. The bum smiles.
Sam’s friends remember him for nothing in particular. He walks having scarcely said goodbye, hearing melancholic music in his head. The music tells stories of sadness. Its melody imagines melancholy, and takes from Sam’s melancholy its imagination.
Sam smiles.