The Identity Element

I am a wretch. I have no friends. All the members of my family are dead. What I call home you would call a hovel. I can wear all the clothes that I own at one time though it takes several layers. My meals come mainly from soup kitchens and garbage dumpsters. At least I can bathe daily and keep myself clean (not all the wretches I come across can do so). I have a New York City library card and travel from branch to branch reading books and newspapers and logging onto the Internet through their computers. The musty smell of books sooths me. The flickering of computer monitors passes time.

I once lived in more prosperous times that included a wife and children. They have been obliterated. Every physical trace of them was destroyed in fires. Of course I had a father, a mother, siblings. They existed too many years ago. My wretchedness has removed them from memory. Except that I recall having a family, I remember nothing about them at all.

I once worked. Now, I collect Social Security. The pension fund I contributed to for 40 years was stolen. No one was prosecuted, no one was held responsible. I read all the civil court and corporate documents, the SEC filings, every newspaper and magazine story and every scrap of information on the Internet. I wanted to murder someone, anyone. I wasted time. I found many people who should have known, but no one who was accountable. And there still was no money left. Nothing cannot be undone.

I am just passing time. Keep your sympathies for the other wretches, or soon to be wretches. And I don't care if your sympathies are thrown back at you by them. To hell with them and to hell with you. If I live another 20 years it will only be by amazing luck. I would rather breath than not breath, and that is all. To hell with me.

OK, you say to me, you are a wretch. A self-indulgent man who pretends to being horrible to shock us. As if we can be shocked. You overestimate my concern. I have nothing shocking to tell you. What I have to say will probably not concern even the most sympathetic, or bored, among you. Nor would I indulge in shocking you even if I had something scandalous to say. What I have to say, you already know. I have the time to tell you what you know. You have the time to ignore what you know. There is no great mystery here. We live under the equal shadows of fear and hatred and they mix to create contempt. No one understands better what it is like to live in the focus of contempt as the wretched.

Like an element that leaves unchanged a number it combines with, I am an identity element. Add zero to any number in a set of real numbers and you have no change. One plus zero is one. Multiplication with an identity element does not change anything, nor will anything change under division. Subtract zero from one and it still leaves you with one. I have not changed anything during the nearly 65 years I have trod this earth. Not one member of the human system has been changed by contact with me. Need you wonder why I am so wretched?

Even the librarians I see every week barely recognize me. They remember my clothes, at best. Do you have a library card, they ask even though they have asked me that same question scores of times. It is not their fault. I never borrow materials. Once inside, unless I have to reserve a computer, I never speak to the librarians or to anyone else. I find the furthest spot from their counter to sit. I am especially unnoticed as the library fills with people. When I go to the main branch, I sit as far back of whichever side of the great hall I choose that day and read books just a few steps from my seat. I once fell asleep there and lay undisturbed until morning and the opening of the doors. I let an hour pass before I got up and left. No one noticed.

My whole being is concentrated on keeping to myself, staying alone. I stay so far apart from anyone else, I readily pass unnoticed. Sometimes a neighborhood regular recognizes me and gives me a nod. I then change my route. It is easy to find alternate ways to the same place.

You might think I am exaggerating. You think no one could so completely disappear. Yes, we can so disappear and, yes, I have thus dissolved. Anyone can hide in plain sight in a world so overfilled with people.