Ok. So hypothetically, say this music plays on the radio for no one. And say that the radio isn't actually owned by anyone. Its actually a radio that should have been turned off, sitting in the backroom of some pizza parlor. For some reason it wasn't. There is no fault to be associated. There is only the fact that the music is playing.

And there is a three quarters moon outside, displayed wide away up beyond the reach of the far too flung, clench fisted, wistful and winsome individuals that swoon upon its sight, directing their energies towards its pull.

The train tracks that run far out along side the town are silent. There are no freight cars to bull their way through the night. Whatever noise might have been heard was long ago assembled into the collective thought of the day to day.

Its a narrow perspective. Something difficult to describe and even harder to understand if you haven't worn the tear of days out on the plains.

Benson

San Francisco is something. Or perhaps California is. Either way, I just passed an older African American man walking out in the Avenues next to Ocean Beach. His attire and edifice struck me as something humorous. I liken it to something that Robert Guillaume would have worn during an episode of Benson in which he decides to give up butlerdom to become an air traffic controller.

As we approached each other, I became interested in him for the sheer sake of oddity. His beige tan, three piece suit adorned with a royal red, half-windsor tie knot completed his sense of stature and purpose. He was sporting full enclosure headphones with large protruding antennae. If it wasn't for the suit, I would have figured he had to have just spontaneously walked off the tarmac at SFO Airport leaving hundreds of passengers from some place like Cleveland, Ohio stranded in a hot and stuffy airline cabin. He was a man on the move, destined for his own destination, and I knew it the moment I spotted him 30 yards ahead walking towards me.

It was a sight to see and completely out of place here in this beach neighborhood. It was just he and I on the avenue. There were no other distractions, but they wouldn't have mattered anyways. I was so enthralled with his scene that I wanted to take a picture with my cellphone to capture it.

The distance between us closed to a small gap and I decided that this moment would never be here again. I had to go for it.

I attempted to flag him down but the large dark sunglasses he was wearing shielded him from me. If he wanted, he could completely ignore me and walk straight through my hair brained fascination, not even acknowledging my existence. I might never even be able to confirm that he actually existed either if that was the case.

Ten feet from me, I realized that even if I was able to stop him I would have no way to convey to him my sense of excitement and appreciation for his bizarre getup without completely offending him at the same time. I was stuck in the lurch of split decision, caught between a thought and an action, out on a limb trying to wave down a complete stranger for selfish reasons who, in his own world, was probably just out for a leisurely stroll to enjoy Golden Gate Park.

Any concern as to how I could cull his attention long enough to extemporaneously convince him to let me take his picture was quickly rendered irrelevant when he turned to me, and rebuffing my advance, said in a gruff, black voice, "I ain't got time for you people." Shaking his head, he pushed past me continuing on towards sight unseen.

Go figure that.

He was an icon of a time period long since gone, an artifact that slipped through the folds and suddenly appeared before me as a mirror reflection in the matrix of time and space, far out in the Avenues on the Western Edge of the Continent.