richie havens clerk

different year.
same store.
same fare.
tonight she is older, so much older, and her jaw is caved-in from the loss of real teeth. she wheezes and gasps for breath, yet she smells of cigarettes.
as i wait for my bank card to be "approved", i hear the sound-track of the "Plaid Pantry".
it is guitars, moving deliberately yet delicately around one another... it sounds nice.

i asked the used-up woman what we were listening to, expecting her to say , "i don't know, something on the radio". why would she care what she listens to at this hour, at her shit job, as she wheezes and gasps?

"Richie Havens", she answered, matter-of-factly, "it's a C.D."

that means it was her choice. she put it in her purse as she readied to go to her shit job. she thought it would make the day better.

that both puzzled and encouraged me. i guess i figured that when you're that "all done", you don't care about Richie Havens anymore.
i wouldn't lay any bets that she will be around next year, she clearly is suffering emphysema + shit job + basic oldness. I thought that her capacity was to buy a can of cat food to share with "Mr. Whiskers", and to sadly put herself to bed under dirty sheets that smelled like smoke.

how wrong i was, to think that she should ever give up on beautiful music.

there is a lesson here, I'm just not quite sure what it is yet.

i thought about her old smokey clothes that nobody cares about except her. i wondered about how you decide to do your hair when you are dying and have a shit job. how does one make these choices?

it occurs to me that she probably has a name, though i never care to learn it.
she just sells me beer.

i want to be at the beach more than ever, in my own old smokey clothes. i want to shed them to go surfing.
in the water, everything is equal, and everything makes sense. it is all fair.

i want to skip and glide, forever held in time, because nothing else matters. my Richie Havens.
i guess people look at me and wonder what i am doing, why i care.

i don't know, i just do.