Where I was, poetically expressed, when in recovery, wondering where my life had gone.
As a Bethelite, I dressed in hand-me-down clothes -- gotten out the clothes barrel at Bethel -- but I was earnest. Fellow Bethelites and I scoured the streets and hotels of New York City (Manhattan) for willing souls.
In the foreign-language territory, there were many converts. We chatted up the Caribbean islanders (here, in the big city, earning money to send back home) in their native tongue and got lots of addresses. These humble people gladly welcomed us into their humble, crowded apartments.
My much older, wiser and jaded shell of spent humanity gazes downward, through a pane of unwashed glass. I eye, with mixed emotions, my youthful, scrubbed ruddiness and earnestness. Though I am dressed in somewhat worn, hand-me-down threads, my tattered saintliness won over not a few souls.
Little did I then realize that the inherent naturalness of youthful persuasion had been reeled in, unhooked, and shoved into the creel of rigid and uncompromising uniformity. Unwittingly, I had been selling my own soul while in the process of winning over the souls of trusting men, women, children.
From my enlightened vantage point, I peer back in time. I look down at my beautiful, young manhood. From a darkened pane I see my reflection and despise what I have become.
Strangely, a cool sense of tranquility washes over me as I come out of my reverie, my black reminiscence.