THE STRANGER'S DESIRE

PACE I: DREAMS OR PEACE?

Tale of Caution:

Dreams are towering trees, heightening weeds
Stealing daylight, nutrients, from sprouts of peace
Whereas if 'want', won't supersede
Peace sprouts up, quite naturally

(poesia I)

• • •

The stranger sulked on his black motorcycle at a red light. The solemn man could see the hanging moon reflect in the mesmerizing Mediterranean waves of Palermo, Sicily, as he prepared to traverse a small ancient bridge in front of him. Opal waters stared bleakly at him, matching the shadowy shade of his soul.

Ombroso. Ombroso. Ombroso...

Ombroso, which meant shady, or shadowy, in Italian, kept replaying like a broken record in his mind... maybe moreso in his heart.

The night rider's buff figure sported a beige knapsack, a black helmet, and formal attire. He reached his hand back to make sure his knapsack was fully closed. He felt his blueprints protruding so he tucked them back in. The knapsack carried the blueprints, a grey lab coat, chewing gum, a laptop, a charger, and nothing else. Commodities were becoming less common, after all, and the government had attributed this to the ongoing Italian Civil War. The Civil War was a class war with the government and wealthy mafia members on one end, and the lower class, lower mafias, and refugees (which now faced deportation under recent legislation) on the other end. The night rider was a researcher visiting on visa, and he intended on staying safe and staying away from the class war. He looked up half expecting the red light to have turned green.

Still Red.

He subconsciously checked his watch, read the time, and forgot the reading a second later. A ghoulish feeling from the back of his mind had told him to stop and enjoy the beauty of a Sicilian night, the beauty of a moment, but that part of his brain had descended to Hades. He tried to resuscitate it nonetheless. He stared out over licorice waves onto dusky mountains across the gulf. He breathed in the salty sea air... held it... and exhaled. He felt a connection with the Earth and with his ancestors. The enjoyment was sparse, but a mimetic wave of peace was temporarily experienced. The uneasy gears in his mind impeded with their natural cranking, working against his exhausted yearning for serenity.

He snapped back up at the light.

Still Red.

He wiped dew from his helmet's visor as his hidden impatience grew. He knew that this moment in-between time was in vain and wouldn't be remembered. In-between moments were only useful for two things: personal maintenance and fulfilling menial duties to the job, such as scrolling emails. There was little personal maintenance to do, and his inbox had reached zero from the in-between at the previous red light, so he pushed his conscious toward subconscious...

To his subconscious mind, life was mainly about maximising fulfilment to the lesser tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. For food, shelter, and health, he would need money, and thus, exceeding in his job was his duty, and most actions in his life aimed to support this duty, whether directly or indirectly. And before even his duty toward his work, which provided him the means to fulfil his duties to the self, he had a duty to simply maintain himself through personal maintenance. Personal maintenance was his unquestionable natural duty, so everything else followed this. One could even argue that personal maintenance helped him to better devote focus toward work, and that work's output was ultimately his singular priority, with everything else in support of it.