The Wayfarer

The thin man in his late twenties, wearing a leisure suit, materialized out of the darkness at 2nd Avenue and 21st Street as Sparky and I returned from our walk, about 2:20 a.m. He was heading south, away from downtown. He could hardly keep standing, he was so drunk. He began talking, and we had a strange conversation. He seemed vaguely-foreign, but he spoke so well, I couldn't place him: Iranian? Columbian? Cuban? Palestinian?

"You seem to be a man of education and understanding," he said to me. "You seem to be traveler; a wayfarer," I told him. There is a stage of drunkenness where one develops an overarching love of the world, and where one wants to philosophize about the aching beauty of the place. He was in this stage of inspiration, but since intoxication also strips away some of the higher-language abilities, we couldn't get much farther than how pretty the moon was.

"Language is just a tool," I told him. "Knowledge is what is important," he replied. "I am just worthless," he said. "No man is worthless," I responded.

"Which way is downtown?" he asked. "North, back where you came from," I replied. And off he stumbled into the darkness.