“All of us are dreaming this reality right now, but you two are dreamers. You're a writer, you're trying to get all these ideas you have swimming around in your head on paper, but you can't do it because you're too caught up in the game. You have to get them out, get them down. You have to be brave. You have to be a MAN.”
Words spilling out of him as the light turns and we all start to cross. I don't know this guy, never seen him before. His hands rolling fast in front of him to catch each thought as it ripens and drops from his lips.
“And you,” he said, gesturing to her, “you have to help him. You have to be courageous. You have to make a courageous song.”
I'm looking at her. Noxious thoughts are wafting in my skull and I'm trying to wipe them clean like dust from a mirror. The man in the straw hat is staring at the ground, not making eye-contact with either of us. There's something off about him, but not like the usual junkies stumbling around the Mission. There is a fire, an intensity in his pale blue eyes that seems to cut through the air with a lucid precision. And a vibration coming off of him, a wave or a pulse slightly out of phase like ripples rising from the pavement on a hot day.
But it's not a hot day. It's colder than it should be and the sky is cloudy and gray.
“So many people are caught up in the game,” he continues, “they don't see the signs. A tiger bites a lady at the zoo. That's a sign, but people don't see it as a sign. They don't recognize the signs and they don't recognize prophets. They don't see that Triste is a prophet.”
We reach the curb on the other side. The wind is whipping through our jackets and there is some place we have to be.
“Look around,” he said, “there are signs all around us. Be brave, be courageous. This isn't Triste speaking, this is the voice of God.”