Primitive Genius

    I am sitting in the train station observing human stupidity. There are three doors into the train station, two automatic and one that is locked. The locked one has a sign beside it that apologizes for the inconvenience.  Other than that it is just a locked door. Yet there are still problems.
    People are everywhere, that’s one problem. Rushing back and forth. Talking up and down. Breathing, laughing, cocooned in their private feelings and wool to keep them safe from the cold. The floors are marble and each footstep rings against the floor so the hall is a void of noise. Coughing, walking, crying. The floor quivers lightly.  And human stupidity is everywhere. A woman aims chapped lips to a straw of a cold drink — but misses. A little boy accidentally pulls a hat over his pink, pudgy face. A man looks for his glasses — eyebrows frowning, eyes frantic — but the glasses are placed neatly on his head.
    And I am watching all this stupidity and find it funny, but also enlightening. Here we are, under a man-made roof, on man-made floor, basking in the wonder that is man-made genius. And yet when faced with simple tasks man still makes mistakes. Still wavers on the line that separates ape and human intelligence. I decide to see the line clearly for myself and I sit, watching the locked door, staring it down. This is the line, I tell myself. Behind the locked door is the human mind, smart, quick and non-faltering. Before the locked door is primitively, man when he was hairy and walked on all fours. If man walks over to the locked door, ignores the sign, and expects it to open, then man really is simple. Man isn’t genius.
“Damn.” A man with a hat that droops over his face and dreadlocks that fall like black tears from his scalp, walking inot the locked door and swears when he realizes it isn’t open. He stares for a second and the glass that doesn’t open. He is staring the line straight in the face, his eyebrows knit and he frowns. His hands area clenched. And for a second he has seen it, he has seen the stupidity of man.
“Damn” He walks over to the working automatic door beside him. He walks into the trainstation and is greeted by busy, noisy people that don’t pay him any mind. He looks around him with dark eyes to made sure nobody saw his mistake, his stupidity.  His dreadlocks almost seem to relax and settle at his shoulders. Nobody has seen. He walks on.
   I giggle. I write a number one at the top of a sheet of notebook paper that I hold in my hands. I continue to watch closely, people rush past and people walk and people sit. The floor continues to rumble. I watch the snow outside gather and watch cold, purple hands touch the cold metal of the automatic doors.
   The next victim is a woman with tired eyes and a long red nose. She is outside the trainstation, outside the doors. Her face is mutated through the glass, her eyes are mismatched, skin on her face is like the patches of a patchwork blanket. She waits behind the locked door. Waiting. Watching the metal door handles that never split appart. Listening for the creaking sound of opening that never rings out. She shakes her head, reads the sign and realizes her mistake. She enters the trainstation through the doors that work and I realize it wasn’t the glass that mutated her face. She enters the trainstation and her eyes hand even lower, she continues to shake her head because she has experianced the stupidity of man too. She shivers, as if the experiance scares her.
   I laugh out loud, quietening down when those around me stare. I write a bold number two on the top of my paper and I laugh again as I watch the woman with the mutated face scurry down the busy trainstation, shaking her head, pretending the door incident never happened.
    There are six in total. A sort man with large boots that consumed his knees, a young woman with a ponytail, a middle aged man with a long jacket and a young boy with a round stomach. Some laugh, some jolt, some stay quiet but they are all stung with the spark of embarrassment. They stand there, nose to the locked automatic door that they thought would open and they are poisoned with a electricity of shame. With the electricity the ape inside every man. No matter how long the pony tail, or how large the boots, man cannot totally hide his ancestor. Staring at the glass of the locked door they all realized this.
  I laugh everytime. At last I have to move over a couple of seats because those around me are annoyed by my laughing. I write a huge six on the top of my paper, smiling. I am watching these people -- these humans -- and I think about how stupid they all area and I am scoffing at them, jeering and mocking their stupidity.
    But then there comes a young man. Black hair down to his shoulders, a hairy face with a large beard and huge eyebrows like the dark clouds of the outside. He has huge ears and a large flat nose. He is walking fast. His feet seem to fly. He is not paying attention. Speeding, racing, not looking. He hits the door with great force, great ferocity. The line between ape and man hits him in the face. Peirces his skin, slicing his cheek. Knocks him off his feet. He falls to the floor and then he is still. His face turns pale white in the coldness of the outdoors.
    I don’t move. I want to watch, I want to look at the bare street of the outside, snow convered, ice frozen where the man lies. I look at the busy people that rush back and forth and I wonder who will ever find the man that lies like a statue fallen on the snow. His feet quiver lightly. Nobody notices. His frozen eyes twitch. Nobody sees. He is unseen by the stupid world that ignores him and ignores the world around them.
    I continue to watch. I watch and I see a woman walk out of the train station and see him, the statue, lieing on the floor. She screams, runs back into the train station and she is absorbed by the crowd and out of sight. I get out of my seat, a little worried and almost guilty. I let the white sheet of notebook paper, covered in numbers, fall to my sides. Walking over to the train station door I am pushed to the side by rushing people. Security personnel and the woman that disappeared are rushing out of the automatic doors and they run over to the man that lies still on the floor. They yell for him to wake up. They pat his face.  They call him, nag him. He doesn’t wake up but the security personnel lift him. One by one more and more people start running to the door. A young woman runs over to the man and asks the security personnel whether there is anything she can do. An old man offers his cane. A little girl fetches a glass of water. The security personnel walks with the man, snow covered, drenched in bruises and behind them walks hundreds. I am close by and do not follow but I can hear the crowd.
“I have water”
“I have band-aids”
“Shall I call the hospital?”
Moments later there is the whirl of an ambulance and huge men in white jump out and dive into the crowd. They lift the snow covered man into their arms and they lift him into the ambulence. The lights of the ambulance relfects on the snow and flashes blue and white blue and white. People are crying. Tissues fall into the snow and melt like snowflakes. They watch the doctors as they lift the man into the ambulance and place him on a white bed, as white as the snow. The doors close and the ambuelnce leaves with a ringing louder then footsteps. The blue and white lights dissappear and then outside is dark. The crowds watch quietly as they ambuelence dissappears and so does the unconcious man with the large ears and the hairy face.

    I walk back into the trainstation. The station half empty now, and my insides too. I think about the man and his hairy face. I think about the line between man and ape. Then I think about the old man that offered his cane. Maybe man is not stupid, I think and pick up my paper from the floor and throw it in the trash can, maybe man is merely composed of a sort of primitive genius.

The Shiniest Star

“That's her.” She says and she points up at the shiniest star, “I know it.”

I laugh at her and I tell her she sounds like a Disney movie. She looks at me, her eyes wide, big and droopy, ponds dripping down her cheeks. She shakes her head.

“I don't care.” She says, “I don't care what kind of movie I am. I like Disney movies. That's her. It has to be.”

I shake my head, smiling because I know she hurts easy and the past few days have been hard for her.

“Okay.” I say, “Whatever.”

There is a long silence. The ground beneath us is like sand, the concrete pokes at the flesh on my back. We lay staring at the sky. Her fingers are still pointing at the shiniest star, like big fat twigs, big round dogs howling at the moon. I watch her childish arms wave about in the milky air.

“Have you ever been in love?” She asks me.

I look at her. Her hair stroking her face like slender fingers. Her eyebrows sitting on her forehead like logs.

“I have.” I say. “I know.”

There is a silence that confirms she knows what I mean. Although I barely know what I mean. It just seems like the right thing to say. In the thick air and the cold breeze it is hard to know what to say.

“I did.” She says, she puts her fingers down to her sides and she stares up at the sky, sticky like pudding. “But then she's gone so...”

I look up at the shiniest star. It twinkles and it hurts my eyes.

“There is nothing wrong with Disney movies.” I say.

She doesn't look at me, her eyes are pasted to the bowl of sky and the millions of missing children that shine through it.

“It's just that I don't think it is fair to call her that star.” I look up at the sky, “Not everybody knew her. She wasn't the most popular. That doesn't mean she wasn't special. She was amazing...but...”

I struggle to find the right words. Thoughts that have piled themselves in the back of my head appear in m mouth and I lick them and speak them and regret them. I smile again because smiles are warm.

“Think of all the small stars.” I say, “Everybody always talks about the shiniest...but what about those that aren't so shiny? They are wonderful too, aren't they? They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be loved.”

I pause. I look at her face and I see tears. Silver fish in the ponds of her eyes. I smile again because it hurts to do anything else. I reach for her childish hand and her chubby fingers. I hold her tight because I don't know how she feels but I can imagine.

“That's why I think that star is her,” I say, and I point to a small star in the corner of the universe, “I know it.”