Kempt Man

The fog was thick as pea soup. Every writer waits for the day when they can write that and have the experience to see how thick that actually is. The morning sky was obliterated by the fog. The Isaiah song 'On the wings of an eagle we will rise' was being painted in the sky. Yes, yes, these are seagulls but try substituting seagulls for eagle and the song will just lose a little something. Nobility perhaps?
He made such a perfect picture, walking in the fog, looking lonely and yet,

... in this day when few people don a suit for the day, he also looked kempt. Now that is an old- fashioned word and not often used these days as it was immediately underlined in red by this new fashioned computer program. But kempt he was, his hair was slicked sleekly to one side and one could imagine him combing it down in the morning before he went out for whatever early morning errand was so pressing. He had that outwardly wasting away appearance that was marked by the bagginess of the suit that hung onto his body in a betrayal of what once would have been filled out with muscle and youthful sinew. His craggy face looked like it had been seamed together from the ruins of Corinth. The gnarled hands gripping the cane were arthritic. But... it was the cigarette clenched between thin lips that ably maneuvered the habit suggesting it had been formed at a young age. This existential therapy stood out as a bit of rebellion against the inevitability of all things one could not control.
Maybe, just maybe,... this man's search for meaning would have Frankl himself offer him a cigarette.