The Gist of Life: Chapter III
A Life Sentence
(1,388 words)
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A male child is born in the initial stages of social restructuring. It is during the period for spirited voices to march as one, while those on the side chant in agreement or disagree, shouting expletives. A nation’s ideology is divided and formulated by the equality of the people’s rights, leaving a city in discourse. In time, voices were replaced with various paraphernalia, symbolizing a growing trend. What direction will it take? During the stretch of the present, the left is favored by the quantity of the region that overwhelms their presence of mind.
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It is the Golden State of California, and across the city by the bay lies the city of Oakland. The moment was when Oakland was predominantly black by sixty-six percent, mainly on the east and west sides of the city’s center. The people of other races, primarily white, reside in the hills and the towns beyond Oakland’s city limits. The cities of San Leandro, San Lorenzo, and Hayward are situated in the south. And the college city of Berkeley sits up in the north. The trend that affected the people across the west bay in San Francisco wasn’t as boisterous in the east bay.
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A prime location for hotels to cluster, nestled between the city’s airport and the stadium. Home to the Oakland A’s baseball team, three World Series in the early half of the nineteen-seventies. Now, the child is a teenager who watched all three World Series championship games played in Oakland. Also, home to the Oakland Raiders football team, Super Bowl nineteen-seventy-seven winners. Now, the teen is a young man who’s assisting the Raiders at the hotel where he works, Coach Madden and his assistants are sitting in the lobby across from the young man at work.
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It’s the night before their Super Bowl championship game. He’s off that day to attend the game, thanks to the complimentary ticket from Defensive End John Matuszak, whom he befriended. When he’s in town with the Raiders, playing a game or practicing at the Oakland Stadium, he would take him, better known as ‘The Tooz,’ in his car to his mother’s small apartment complex that he bought for her. They remained friends until the Raiders moved on from Oakland. The Tooz acted in the movie ‘The Goonies’ as ‘Sloth.’ The young man lived there until he moved in 1980, the year Coach Flores and the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, winning the Super Bowl with Quarterback Jim Plunkett.
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Which was across the bay in South San Francisco. He would shop at the Serra Monté Center in Daly City and not at Stonestown Mall, where he felt they cater to the older generation rather than his age group. Though festering within him, a brooding reality would resonate long before the present, no matter how much he wanted it to sequester. He recalls an incident at a large open entryway of a store at the Serra Monté Center, where a young man of similar age, who was dressed in a red suit and tie, had held him after an alarm beeped while he was entering.
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Simultaneously, three black girls laden with bags were exiting. He was baffled as the young man, whom he stopped entering, was carrying nothing. An ominous error that cost the store a financial loss due to an overzealous doorman and his poor assessment of observation; literally, he gave three shoplifters a clean getaway. The innocent is guilty until an error proves that the guilt falls on another, trial by error. Life goes on for a young man judged incorrectly for being guilty of a crime. However, he was proven innocent due to a human error.
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The adjectives assert the narrative, just as the adverbs perform the action. The positive message came after the predicate brought a sense of growth and understanding. A thorough probing of emotions that intertwine deeply underneath his fragile exterior, exposing him to the harshness of reality and the exploits that tether the circumstances that surround him. Clowns dress for the audience’s benefit, as laughter breaks before the routine. The same occurs when he dresses up to hide his secretive routine, therefore, shielding himself from shameful harm. He applies riddles to relieve himself from dire situations. Escapism necessitates outlets from reality.
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The left says they’re right, and the right says they’re not. The party is blamed for the last-minute politics, and politics are blamed for the last-minute parties. Choose the party that will light up your secret, which he does. The party he chose, most believed, is a deterrent to his secret causes, being antagonistic and degrading. He contemplates fighting it for what it’s not, rather than taking it for what it is. The secret remains so, unchangeable from its emergence. The power of it overwhelms him.
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It changes his demeanor, which alters his way of life, and now he’s a man without direction with a secret deep within him. The times are changing, as he goes with the flow until he lets go, but not his secret. His life and his secret are inseparable; if he wants to live, his secret lives too. The foundation of his life is built upon the four cornerstones that uphold his secret, all unshakeable and very secure for a lifetime without fear. He goes his separate way by not looking behind him, thinking that he made a clean break from it, but finds himself abandoned. He consoles himself with a lazy river, drowning his sorrows, but nothing else.
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The reflection in the river is based on the subtleness of its velocity at the time and the intensity of its lone viewer. There are times when being alone will offer clarity to his perspectives, where he can better navigate his life, temporarily, free of any inhibitions. It is moments like this that shed a space for a cluttered mind to spread its wings and land long enough to admire the monarchs upon a crown of flowers. He joins the butterflies outside his house, and smells a row of roses with their velvet petals. To be one with nature is an escape from yourself and being free from imprisonment.
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Vanquish does not mean victory; instead, it means vacant, presently unoccupied. Brooding fills the void, and the short-term happiness is no longer there. It was enjoyed while it lasted, no matter its length. The precedent forestalled the ongoing trauma that he had endured up to his recent events. All interchangeable, now and then, good times and bad times: Alas, natural forces favor the damaging elements over the sublime. Traces of either energy will interact, exchanging dominance on various levels.
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The cross’s leverage of notoriety in human history, elevated by a significant incident, other than the crisscrossing of two wooden planks. There are stories behind ordinary things; many are uneventful, but for those that are eventful, they become recognized primarily in history books. The prominence of his secret had risen long before recorded history. And when it became part of it, ideally, it roamed the art world through paintings and sculptures. Later, written words were explorative, exposing their proper form in the open. Its exposure was costly on the living.
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Tribulations mock or humiliate, chipping away to access brittle veins and make them weaker, hoping to stem the flow of life. At last, a cutaway image is outlined, and shivering hands attempt their best to tape it so it will not fall away. He cast his troubles on his shoulders and prepared for the worst to come. He finds a solemn corner, like many times before. He pauses for self-reflection on his life that he has lived for these many years. He smiles at the longevity of it and believes that its ruffled line will come to an end.
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All his friends are moving on, getting married, and having families, while he still lives at home alone. Late afternoons turn into late evenings, and midnight turns into midday. The endless cycle of loneliness. As days, weeks, and months turn into years, the subject of counting forestalls for a period of time. Then all of it fades away, the tricycle, the bike, and the car. The life of an older man, who held on to his secret all his life, now lies feeble on his bed. Death takes an eclipse of his life, as he is laid to rest, and the finality of his lifetime secret is buried along with him.
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