“I am the king of all kings.” I
heard the man say, ignorance is bliss; I told myself, “King… King of
all kings.” He was shouting at himself, the man in the street, I was
just walking in the neighborhood mentally drunk and sunk into my own
thoughts trying to leave myself behind and runaway, hoping it would
never last, hoping that being me would never last, but it wasn’t about
me that day, I saw this man, less than a beggar, staring into
nothingness, in other words of others “just somebody who’s not worth
it.” Somebody I told myself, he’s still somebody, my eyes traveled to
his direction for a moment and one more, all I could think about was
that I’m not him, and there’s a difference between being him and being
in his shoes, so much of a difference, destiny in its vast wisdom,
written by the hands of God, gave me who I am, and gave him who he is,
so at the end of the day, part from what we have, I’m always me, and
he’s always him, it’s more complicated than it sounds, at least to me it
is, when I was kid, sitting in the back seat of my father’s car, I used
to look outside the widow, look at all those people out there, so many
of them, yet none of them is me, and I’m not any of them, similarities
making uniqueness at the same time, and when I see a man turning his car
around, taking a different direction, I say to myself here’s a man I
would never see again, even though I never knew him and never will, for
that particular moment he was part of my life, just like everybody else,
a human’s effect on a background of every moment of mine, ‘I’m not him’
it kept nagging on me, so much in such a standard fact, even though I
see him now I can’t see his life, can’t remember or wait, and when I
sleep at night he won’t be there anymore, I won’t still care, I won’t
remember, when I was young I taught myself to care, because even though
I’m always me and not anyone else it doesn’t mean they don’t exist,
people are more than just shadows walking around, so I looked at the
man, trying not to judge by his repulsive appearance, life have had its
toll on him one time too many, I could see his lips moving as he talked
to himself, a man who had lost his mind I realized, then it struck me,
the words he said could never leave my mind, “I’m the king of all
kings…” first thing I thought was to laugh, this man has obviously lost
his mind to a point of no return, but the more I looked at him I could
see he wasn’t even there, he wasn’t walking in the same street as I was,
not even the same world, so distant, so true, reality is such a lie, we
believe what we wish to believe and throw away the rest, this man is
not the king of all kings I know, but in his own world he was a king,
and what difference does that make now, each one of us is living in his
own world, I’m not him and he is not me, and for a moment logic failed
to apply, I was lost between reality and what it represents, and all I
could think off, I just passed by a king in the street, a crazy man with
no apparent life or purpose, but in some reality he was king, it’s more
like a video game, for a couple of hours you play and become someone
else, a prince, a thief, a hero, a serial killer or even a cook, wasn’t
that reality, you can’t say it wasn’t, you just can’t say it was either,
we only see what our eyes wants us to see, our minds comply and tells
us it’s real as we follow in awe, oblivious to what is and what is not…
too late now for us to see, cause there’s nothing to see, all went
through my head within a moment and another, as the man passed me by, I
kept going on carrying my dinner in a plastic bag smiling at myself
thinking “Hell I don’t care about reality… I just hope this food remains
real long enough for me eat it.” I looked right back at the man one
last time, he never said it again but I could never forget it, his voice
so loud, face so true, and hands waving… “I’m the king of all kings.”
