phantasmagoria

So I was walking down Fifth after a filling dinner, not alone.  It was supposed to be a day of celebration, not for me, but mostly for my friend.  But neither of us was really in the right mood.  My friend was upset and generally feeling tired for a number of reasons.  I felt the same way but couldn't pin down why.  My mind was drifting away as the same old scenes flashed by on Fifth, cars, tourists, shops.  I was drifting thousands of miles away.  My friend was talking about how things seem so much bigger when we are kids, but are in fact much smaller as you get older.  I was remembering the only main street in my hometown, and there used (and probably still is) to be a park, more like an old folks' home with the entrance facing the main street, with a big staircase that seemed too steep to me, I was 3 or 4.  My grandparents used to take me there for a walk, or for the swing.  And I was thinking of my dad, of how he needs to gain some weight or he'd become a veritable beanpole of an old man.  Old man.  And I was recalling this passage I read in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux, about an old man, roughly in his sixties, Paul meets in Myanmar.  The country, its people, all in decrepit condition.  Scenes of despair and dread.  The old man gets two dollars of pension every month, he lives in a bamboo shack with a rent of four dollars every month.  The old man owns a beatup scooter rickshaw of somekind, the kind that needs manual peddling.  He is a teacher for forty years.  But he is making his ends meet nearing the end of his days by peddling visitors from one place to another.  His daughter decides not to marry so she could look after her poor old dad.  I think maybe it's this passage, the old man's story, that somehow ruined my day, and my mood.  So I was experiencing this phantasmagoria of scenes and objects that I didn't really wish to think about.