He quietly sits under a bridge drinking his days away. His fingers are badly stained by years of smoking, even burned black. He is 56-years old and sometimes when his beer gets hot, he pours it into a cup of ice. But, that is all you would know if you passed him by without talking, if you were observant.
I find it fascinating that John has the creative enthusiasm to operate a blog site that he updated daily, until his phone recently broke. Sometimes, he will venture into the library to update his posts, other times he relaxes with other homeless friends he lives with.
John’s blog is a mixture of sci-fi with an added touch of small reality throughout his posts. In one post he wrote, “I spent most of my life moving around with a back-pack on and sometimes I read a text-book for weeks wondering about the inventors that had left their thoughts behind.” He also talks about bug bites, describing them with the mathematical term of "asymptotic." He said the bites he received at the age of 14 were in the shape of a penis. Yes, you read that correctly. He has a sense of humor, a very interesting sense of humor I might add.
After a few laughs about his blog, he talked about the death of his mother in Ithaca, New York where he grew up. He described the city as a place where geniuses are on every corner. His mother was struck by a truck and killed in the city that was founded in 1790. His thoughts on geniuses made sense, considering Cornell University is in Ithaca. He told me he came to Murfreesboro over 13-years ago because his sister was killed in an automobile accident. He never left after the funeral.
“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” ― Edgar Allan Poe