We walked up the stairs from the beach, just finishing watching the sun go down. To our left, outside of the steps of a beautiful, extravagant, luxurious apartment, sat a man with his newspaper & sunglasses. As we passed him, he exclaims: "ohmygosh! Did you see that hummingbird??! It came here & looked right at me!! This is my THIRD hummingbird today!! It MUST be a sign!!" He looked to be about 65 years old, had a red polo golf shirt & tan khaki shorts, with the look of a local on him, and had a ball cap covering his thinning gray hair. We began what we thought was small talk, with the man we later found out was Mark, the warrior-poet. No, we did not see the hummingbird, we stated sadly. Before we could finish our sentence, mark recounted all of his hummingbird moments of the day & his take on what the meaning of it was. He began to launch into a tale about "Herman the hesitant hummingbird", followed by "Beverly the bumbling bumblebee" & "Lucille the lamenting ladybug". He wrote these short children stories for his nieces & nephews in Indiana, not his local nieces & nephews, because they didn't appreciate his presence as much due to his nearness, but the ones across the country, whom he rarely saw, and he would send these stories to them.
He told us that he went to 'Nam and had a lot of survivors guilt because "a lot of my buddies ended up on the wall and I was shooting and killing people and stuff".
He told us about nearly every girl he had fallen in love with, many of which did not reciprocate the love. He told us about how he was depressed last year. How Facebook could be so depressing, "people can go on and on about their woes, but then I found twitter and you have to be very succinct! And oh, I just LOVE twitter!!"
He showed us his account, told us how many people followed him and how many he followed. He told us about how Taylor Swift had followed him for awhile, then unfollowed him. He told us how the most beautiful woman in all of Saudi Arabia followed him, but when she unfollowed him, he was heart-broken. He messaged her a few times, but "she wasn't coming back for anything!"
Every woman he talked about was the most beautiful, most lovely woman in the whole entire world. And every one of them broke his heart and he was lost without them. It wasn't creepy, though, but endearing almost, because of how genuine he was.
All of this was told to us as he starting walking down the street with us, talking a mile a minute, and we hardly got a word in. He was so happy and full of life and he wanted to share it with all who would listen. That's why he liked to write, from his fables written for nieces and nephews, to replies and posts on twitter, to encourage the person reading, that they could make life as special or exciting as they chose to.
As we parted ways, he told us, "girls, make sure you guard your heart, because real, true love is hard to find, but when you do, it is worth the wait." Of course, that launched mark, the warrior-poet, into a completely new, semi-related tangent. But he was so pleasant to talk to, we didn't mind. Eventually, we told him our car would be ticketed soon so we had to go, and he was able to share with us some parting words of wisdom. We walked away wondering what had happened! It was the most random, fascinating, crazy conversation ever.
Quotes from Mark:
Guard your hearts. Remember I told you this! GUARD. YOUR. HEARTS.
And then I was on Facebook all the time.
And it made me very depressed. But THEN, I found twitter!
Love is beautiful.
Anything a woman writes is beautiful & wonderful. Truly!
What's your sign? Oh, I'm a Sagittarius! I once dated a Gemini AND a libra! I never loved the libra like I did the Gemini.
All of my girls are doing really well.
(Proceeded to tell all of his previous loves current status)
I was feeling really bad because I never published anything in my life, and then I went to Indiana. And I saw that people still had my writing & loved them.
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