Hello Again My Dear Friends

It is my pleasure to present to you the next chapter of my series. I have been lagging behind with the development of this series as a result of finals and other life duties. However, I think it is better for me to be late and deliver a better product than to be fast and deliver crap.

It is for this reason that I have decided to delay any entry until I feel it is worthy of being posted. I will make great efforts to guarantee that the minimum posting rate for this series will be one week. However, we can not predict the future. Because of this I ask for your patience and leeway with regards to how often I make these entries.

Slip Stream

Franko and I have been waiting at the trolley station down on Palomar street for about 10 minutes, and now it came rolling up to the popular stop on the Blue Line.

The Blue Line of the trolley ran from the edge of the United States of America, the border crossing between Tijuana and San Ysidro, all the way to the job hub of downtown San Diego 15.4 miles away. Through the Blue Line, many migrant laborers are connected to their jobs every day. A transfer station downtown links the Blue Line with a series of other fun-colored trolley lines, enabling people to travel even deeper into San Diego county from the border. The trolleys are more like a train than a typical trolley, except sleek and electric and buzzing with robotic excitement. There is no engine, instead an odd array of antennae which are constantly making contact with power lines up above the train are perched on the top of the cars. At night, one can see sparks being emitted from these antennae as they slide along the power lines.

A bright and psychedelic advertisement adorns the exterior of the leading car, and the rest that follow are plain fire engine red.
Indeed, the trolley is very different from a heavy, chugging, coughing train.

I step onto the bright red trolley and sit down. Franko takes the seat opposite of mine and fixates his gaze on the now passing scenery, like an old movie playing on the TV at an uncomfortably awkward family gathering.
My phone vibrates, and I heave a sigh as I see it was Melanie calling me. I don't want to answer in this environment. The sticky floors, the rambling crazy man, and the heavy sway of the speedy trolley on its tracks lull me into a state of hypnosis. I decide to forget about her, put on my favorite CD and zone out of reality. Time to peacefully escape into my thoughts.
I close my eyes and let the faint noise of a baby crying be shrouded behind a cacophony of electric guitars, violins, cellos and drums. I begin to let my thoughts wander as my consciousness flirts with fragments of memories projected upon the inner surface of my eyelids. Faint reflections of a fractured past enter my mind.
Tragedy. Overwhelming joy. Hope. Despair beyond measure. Supreme elation.

The memories are vaporized with a shudder. A homeless man wearing a most pungent urine as his daytime cologne decided to take a seat beside me during my dive into my inner thoughts, and now attempts to begin a discussion about how he used to save the gum from his rations in Vietnam to bribe young village women for sex. I shift away from him and turn the volume up on my disc player. I turn my consciousness fully inward and leave objective reality behind.

Hunter, banker, judge, knight, king, laborer.
A respectable man is expected to be all of these things within his own dominion.
A protector, a source of guidance and truth for his family.
A pillar of solid marble, a sturdy foundation which his beneficiaries may build and thrive upon.
In the event of danger or trouble befalling his wife, his children, or his kingdom, this sort of man would be expected to respond to the threat with a swift and efficient ferocity only capable of being produced by an intelligent and reasonable person being temporarily driven to insane savagery.
It is not the bandit or the ex-convict's temper one should be wary of.
It is the incomprehensible wrath of a bright and well-tempered man gone mad; this is what you should fear. A man of this sort pushed to the edge can explode like Fat Man and Little Boy, like a star gone supernova. You should fear this man the same way that you fear a punishment from God.

When I compare myself to this archetype of the perfect male specimen, I can't help but feel far lesser than. I am painfully aware of the massive distance between that man and where I stand today. But it is something to live towards, something to strive for. There is nothing wrong with chasing an ideal. Although it hurts when you don't live up to your own goals, that doesn't mean you can't keep making successful efforts towards being a renaissance man.
After all, we all have a little Übermensch inside of us that is forever fighting.

The trolley sways heavier than usual around a bend, and I am shaken out of my daydream. I glance at Franko who is nodding off quite heavily in his seat, his bald head smearing semi-fresh graffiti paint on the wall he was leaning on. I close my tired eyes as we speed towards H street where Jay was waiting for us.