Ananta


I told the woman on the other end of the line I found it missing on October 2nd.

"Actually," explained the D.P.T. operator, "it was towed five days ago."


After work, I stood in the misty fog outside the hospital and called my closest friends to see if they could take me to the Auto Return's fee center in Soma. Karl didn't answer his phone for the third time in one day. Sarah was at home for the night and had a marathon in the morning. Cecilia, my housemate, was on a date with a girlfriend. None of them offered to give me a lift and I didn't even bother asking.


While walking under an overpass that leads to the Bay Bridge, I pass by a rusty green Chevy pickup with shattered windows. The right rear tire sags under its own weight. I wonder why this vehicle hasn't been towed. I momentarily question the justice, then I become grateful for its presence. It's so perfectly placed it could be a prop.

Everything around here is perfectly placed. I imagine the whole world a collection of props, except for me -- I almost feel real.

My mind floats. I try to think about someone, another type of person who might be more out of place here than a nurse dressed in torn scrubs and carrying a backpack.

I think of a fifty year old white guy who’s wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. He hurries through intersections. Drivers honk at him unmercifully. I think of Japanese tour busses gone off course. I think of thirty year-old Singaporeans with pale skin, dressed in white, wearing Hello Kitty hats snapping flash photography at puddles of piss.

A meek teenager breaks from the crowd and asks if I was on Survivor. I shake my head "no". She responds by covering the lower half of her face and giggling all the way back to the choir.

Off in the distance, I hear a siren fading from blue to red and my eyes begin to adjust again to the darkness. A lone walker is approaching. I pull down my stocking cap and fill my chest with air. He's swinging a piece of thick rope that's tied to his wrist and talking to himself.

Ten yards separate us.

Nine feet.

Twelve inches.

We fuse into one as he passes.

I look behind me and he walks in front of the green Chevy. Suddenly, he stops, glances at the truck and then pivots in my direction.

“Sie müssen Ihr Ego treiben.” he whispers...

and disappears.

I coil the rope a few times around a weed growing in between a crack in the sidewalk, quietly repeating it to myself.



Drive your own Ego.