The Pages of the People
The spiritual impetus
When the man was a U.S. Air Force security forces member in the Middle East sitting on top of a military Humvee with a machine gun in a turret, he didn’t foresee the possibility of being a taxi driver later in life. Now, many years later, he was driving a passenger van with a taxi availability marker on top and the name and number of the company painted on the sides.
After years of odd jobs dealing both with people and lonely nights of service, he was prepared to deal with the transient and unpredictable nature of the job. Even so, the cycles and patterns of the broad analysis went beyond his former capacity to make sense out of the murky miasma; the job was an enigma with sprinkles of absurdity and delight.
The 12-hour night shift would start with relatively peaceful fares from workers and city shoppers trying to get home before the storms of night activity began. Then the atmosphere would shift with expectation and anticipation as the fares morphed into a different crowd ready to revel in the night and commence their duties of rebelliousness and vain pursuits.
The passengers the driver would happen upon through random calls throughout the night would run the gamut of personalities and stories. The ever-changing spirits within body suits would shine and reflect intentions both benign and pernicious in their mostly unknowing consciousness.
The pages of the people would turn with every fare, even during the trip the conversation and overall atmosphere would alter from hopeful hellos to raging goodbyes.
Driving the wayward drunken possessed to the police station to peel their hatred from the cab was common in the nighttime adventures needing a more dramatic end. The frustrations of people would manifest on the driver after hollow nights of drunken promise. He would often become the target of random chaotic madness within city nights full of isolated adventures devoid of the attention so many longed for with desperation.
Single and group fares would accumulate in the night’s activities, the driver trying to make sense of the cycles and patterns as the pages of people would turn and change with every closed and opened door.
Overall, he was catching on to subtle clues as to what the spiritual realm was up to. The small area within the taxi became the stage for strong and weak influences to play their part in the night’s dramatic play.
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Keeping the standard of meaning intact
Each person and group brought their world to the table of hedonistic feasting, as the driver tried to bring peace and common purpose to the abstract madness in heads full of drugs and alcohol. The task’s outcome teetered on tunes within dark shadows of the moon, as streetlights flashed in demonic eyes and electric windows brought gushing winds with sounds of swooshing trees along pavement sidewalks in the Pacific Northwest.
The driver was tasked with a duty beyond the job description and any preconceived notions of interested parties inclined to consider the experience. In gaps of understanding, the man was full of thoughts shooting out like beams of meaning and profound daggers onto the random chaos that filled his spaceship of transport.
The changing pages of people would try to inflict their world and experience upon him without knowing the dark purpose given to them by night shadows directed by spiritual delusions of the unknown.
He could feel the contrasting spiritual components vying for attention, seeking to change the course of time and space within spheres of influence from within and without. He would block their efforts with pragmatic driving duties, focusing on the basic standards of reality beyond the taxi nights full of foolishness and lunacy.
After days, weeks, months, and years of driving the passengers of the damned around in their fleeting escapades of frivolity and meaningless hedonism, the driver became a stone wall impervious of their efforts to thwart his perfunctory duty of driving them to their destination.
The ever-changing influence of personalities shaped by spiritual realities became a rotating illusion the man observed without believing and coming into agreement with their vexing agendas and twisted schemes.
Ultimately, the job he never foresaw in his youthful days of military duty was teaching him the facts of life inside the underbelly of the beast.
Without partaking in the world apart defined by darkness and moon-lit shadows, he could observe the good, bad, and ugly from a position of helpfulness in his efforts to remain a stalwart of common sense among the mad adventures, among the vortex of illusions, among the flippant vanities threatening to consume the human soul and destroy the standards of meaning.
After the vexing rotation of manifested secret personalities, he would fit together a makeshift montage inside his mind depicting the changing patterns and interesting cycles that defined the strange work he fulfilled.
In the end, he would talk with God and pray in Jesus’ name for the countless souls on the broad path of destruction, and for his to be on the narrow path that leads to life despite the adverse influences etched into his life through pathways of dutiful work he felt led to fulfill.
© 2023 Robbie Newport
