"In order to understand you must stand under", was the last thing the man told me before we shook hands and went about our separate ways. It could have gone so much worse, I realized. After all, I barged into his house, unannounced and unwelcome. An elaborate array of all sorts of detritus washed downstream by the mighty Passaic River had been arranged into various artistic pieces scattered throughout the place. A headless, bare chested mannequin, spray-painted silver stood propped up against an inner stairwell wall. Dozens of assorted paperback books lay scattered across a blanket freshly tossed over the cold concrete floor below. A small basket full with snack-pack sized chips and pretzel bags sits atop a wooden chest of drawers, accented by a table lamp adorned with a purple shade. A bouquet of Foxtail Grass penetrated into the softened white wax inside a glass candle vase, drooped from dehydration. These were just some of the things I noticed before a man unexpectedly entered the room, wearing a white puffy jacket and freshly pressed pants, while carrying a plastic bag bloated with what appeared to be empty single-use water bottles. I suppose we both sort of startled each other. "Visitors!", the strange man exclaimed while simultaneously placing down the sack of plastic bottles and reaching out for a handshake. "You can call me Prophet", the man responded while tightly gripping my hand, as my eyes ran up and down his posture, examining his dapper attire.
It became evident that Prophet is a proud man indeed. Proud of the space he carved out within the godforsaken ruins of the crumbling toxic factory we both stood within. But to say Prophet was a homeless man would be a bold-faced lie. For these ruins were as much his home as a typical house with a white-picket fence is to a suburbanite. Yet Prophet's home was far from typical or generic. Still in a bit of shock that I was greeted as a visitor rather than an intruder, I trusted the man to show my friend and I around his house, as he insisted on taking us for a tour. Prophet did not view anything as trash, but rather as art and an extension of his creative mind. Seemingly random objects washed up from the river or artifacts salvaged from inside the abandoned factory all had some sort of artistic value to Prophet and were on display inside his home as if it were some type of underground art gallery. "We humans must live UNDERNEATH the ground!" Prophet asserted numerous times during his tour and speech. It became increasingly clear that Prophet believed in an idea that humans must live underneath the Earth to allow the natural world to heal and flourish above us. A religious man, I suspect not, yet a man of God, most certainly. My run-in with Prophet is truly an experience that will always stick with me. A pseudo-religious ruins sermon based upon a realm of reality preached by a man just ever so disconnected from society, yet clever enough to escape it and build his own utopia underneath.
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