The Bicycle Garden by Marcus B. Anderson

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In this suburban land of cement rivers and asphalt lakes is a spider.
Power lines stretch and weave like a carefully crafted spider web and
the spider has plenty to devour. It is easy to see that the spider has
had some for lunch. Shells of "big-box" and "strip-mall" are scattered
everywhere. Still, the spider remains greedy and keeps his web ever
growing, catching more and more while not discarding the old.

Amongst the spider's catch is a bicycle garden. The garden is shadowed
by other victims and is caught at the corner of intersecting cement
rivers. It is loud in the bicycle garden because of the bustling
vehicles of rubber oars, whose workers require oil, are constantly
passing, and the drivers sound horns and talk to magic plastic. That's
where you can find me sitting on a cement mold rock, resting my feet in
cigarette mulch.

I come here, to the bicycle garden, and take breaks from work, which is
located next to this garden. Yes, there is some of "god's" garden here,
but it is the bicycle gardener's garden that I study. I find beauty in
the aluminum and steel vegetation. All variety of colors seen in a
monitor. Some bicycles even have fungus growing on them, fungus the
color of rust. There are old ancients and new moderns. It is the bicycle
gardener's garden I study.

Most days I am the only one here. I like it that way. Today the gardener
is here. He is a homeless man, and all images of homeless can be applied
to him. Years of not bathing and constant exposure to the sun have given
him an olive skin. He doesn't choose his clothing. He doesn't choose his
meals. His eyes never look at anyone and no eyes look at him. He's often
forgotten in this suburban land of cement-rivers and asphalt-lakes.

The gardener smokes his cigar languidly. As the smoke is released from
him, it swallows his head and gives off an aura of wisdom. The smoke
combs his greasy hair and caresses his weathered skin. The smoke stays.
Then the smoke leaves like a ghost to haunt some other passerby. I
notice all of this repeating. He is fixed on this pleasure and so am I,
in a second-hand way. That is how I came to know him.

"It's a beautiful creation, isn't it?"

He stares. The smoke stares.

"The bike that is. It's a great invention of humanity."

He gathers his things to move.

"Wait! Wait! You can stay there, I...I'm just on break. I'll be leaving
soon. You don't have to move. I'm sorry. It was nice..."

He sits next to me.

"...to meet you."

Underneath the aroma of cigar smoke, his body odor hits my nostrils and
I reflex. Reality sets in my mind that the gardener is really homeless.
I had said earlier all images of homeless could be applied to him, and
this is true, but the homeless are more than just an image. The homeless
are a life, and the gardener's odor hits me with this truth.

He exhaled smoke and words, "What if it's not an invention of man?"

I stare.

"Ideas and thoughts float around us, ready for us to grab them.
Sometimes we're forced to grab, sometimes we're able to ignore their
compelling touch. Humanity owns no originality to its inventions.
Humanity is banal. Something greater has made those ideas and thoughts
accessible." After he's done he takes a long drag of what's left of his
cigar.

I look down, cigarette mulch all around my feet. The gardener had just
spouted off to me what sounded like nonsense, and I suppose he expected
me to respond. What was I to say in response? Do I say nothing and just
let this, what seems to be, crazy man have his thoughts? He's crazy but
certainly not gauche.

I inhale oxygen and then exhale words, "Sounds...like a nice thought."

"A nice thought? What do mean by that, boy?"

"I just have trouble even half-way believing what you just said."

"How's it a nice thought then? You should say what you mean, boy."

"It's a crazy thought, you sounded crazy. Stop calling me 'boy'."

He stares. Inhale. Exhale. The cigar smoke stares, then leaves.

"I don't believe in something greater," I say without even thinking of
where our conversation could go next.

He stares. We both inhale. We both exhale, but with his exhale comes
words, "I don't believe in humanity." Somehow we are both strangely on
common ground.

I leave him with the last words. He leaves me with thoughts. I lift
myself from the molded cement rock and go back to work. I go back to
work in a building located in the middle of a spider's web humanity
constructed. I type on humanity's plastic keyboard and look at a magic
slab humanity built. I walk on cement creeks humanity built and humanity
said it was good. We've done great things.

With a grave turn of events the bicycle gardener is no longer at the
garden and same with his bicycles. The garden is "god's" again. Humanity
decided they were tired of him and located him elsewhere. Humanity kept
him at arms length and kept him hungry, without clothes. His last words
keep with me even more now, "I don't believe in humanity." The humanity
he didn't believe in proved his disbelief in the end. But where was his
"something greater"? His something greater let him continue life alone,
without food, or clothes. His something greater proved my disbelief.
Somehow we are both strangely on common ground in the end.