Even as he marched in lockstep with his hands above his head he felt the onion-skin armor he had meticulously applied to his naked skin would protect him from fascism. This belief was the result of unknown origins as he had purposefully purged parts of his memory which might lead to cohesion or coherency. Being obscure as a meaningful path in life was a prime value upon which nothing else could compare.
If a book were written all in numbers it would be true. This thought occurred to him each and every moment in which he struggled to find words to describe his experiences. He once described his arms as plantains which had not sufficiently ripened to go to seed. Confusing metaphors were the best he could accomplish on most days of the week and he rarely even considered whether he was more enlightened in the afternoon or evening.
A message about the reality of coronavirus once caused him to pause in contemplation, but he became distracted by the fly buzzing around his head while he sat alone in a cow pasture. He felt safe there for a time, safe from disease and the material interests of the local citizenry. Security lost its luster after a few days as he craved uncertainty in a manner that was unhealthy. Wondering was more important to him than knowing even though it took shape in the form of societal dysfunction. He could no more mop floors than perform simple bookkeeping tasks.
Still, he was always able to imagine the shape of clouds in ways that heightened his quality of experience. If there had been an economic need for alternative perceptions of everyday objects he could have become a billionaire. When confronted with cries about freedom from people who had not wanted to wear masks in public he pondered whether the ethics of bank robbers had finally won the day. He thought civility was a concept that had never engaged in dialogue with ideas of liberty. However, the thought was often followed by an amazement at the variety of belt buckles that proliferated in west Texas.
When he had lived in a tent city in Los Angeles he wanted little more than to watch bugs crawl. The mystery that gripped him was why any given crawling insect might choose to go left rather than right at any given time. He tried to imagine what it might be like to be so small and to observe horizons of concrete from such a perspective. Even when he was being beaten for not having clean socks his mind drifted to insect navigation. When a rotting tooth dislodged from his gums he shrugged because it told him nothing about insect movement decision making.
He eventually got infected with the coronavirus. His symptoms were mild at first and he thought his headaches were exclusively the result of banging his head against a brick wall. Within a few weeks, he had difficulty breathing and collapsed on a sidewalk near a convenience store. A police car and an ambulance came for him after someone called 911. When he was admitted to the hospital they brought him back to consciousness briefly and asked him if he had any relatives they should contact. He couldn't figure out why that was important so he shrugged and shook his head no.
Shortly thereafter they intubated him and his last conscious thought was that the experience was less enjoyable than counting rocks on rural gravel roads in Iowa, a practice he found uplifting for a time. He died a day later and no one wondered about his life except the nurse who cried as she held his hand for a few minutes after he passed away.
