R A M B L E
It starts out as chaos really. The different noises and faces. Laughing, talking, searching, staring, slowly blending, until it all becomes a drone. It's jus a constant ringing in my head. A constant reminder of what I'm doing to myself. Then i begin to look at all the people around me. Those whose company I chose, and those I did not. And as look at each person individually I am able to distinguish to connection. The feelings that arise because of the person. Some understand-many do not. I dont hold it aginst them, It's a lesson learned in time. Sometimes, i encounter new feelings. Not by chioce, but maybe circumstances. Events i can not control, things i cannot change, but i wish i could. Confusion begins to cloud my thoughts and i become restless and cold: silent. Mt eyes transfix onto something that isnt there. But still, I look for it. I've always wondered how the look of something unknown can create such a strong physical and emotional reaction. How the absence of something can create a presence. It is like there is glass between us. I can scream forever, but my cries go unheard. So I stop screaming and take a step closer to the glass. I stand locked in your stare, my heart melts as my focus changes. You begin to fade into the background, and i can see my reflection. My eyes are as empty as before, I lower my head and step back. Everybody knows you can't reach the stars. But is it wrong to try??
II
By way of escalator, we decended into hell. Instead of obsidian gates, we met a thousand or more individuals combined into a sentient collective that was as self-aware as a brick, and an infinite amount of times less appealing. City lights and afterglow's rained down on us like confetti from a parade, and we watched that parade--that endless line of downtown traffic-- dance around us in a neurotic display of car-horns and headlights. Had I understood the dynamics of our decent, I would understand that it was no amount of good deeds or prayers that had pulled me out of that sub-basement to that pinnacle of human aspiration; rather, it was simply a conglomeration of wires and gears that had dragged me kicking and screaming and gasping for air out of the dank sub sectors of washington D.C. The wail of electronic brakes and synthesized emotion resounded down a corridor of obscure darkness and commutes long over. And like a silver bullet speeding off into the heart of the sniper's taret, that metro car tore its way along tracks (clickity-clack clickity-clack) into the heart of that amalgamation of car-horns, headlights, and high-risis.
Whether of not this was hell was open to debat, but if ever there was a placebo strong enough to convince a man that death was the only acceptable outcome, then the aura of this damn city was it.
And so we walked down imaginary boulevards and nameless byways; we walked through tunnels and under bridges; we sat in parks and stared at monuments. We lived, that night, through the accomplishments and sacrifices of thousands of men and women, and we turned our heads from the majesty of democracy, to see the fruits of legislation. We watched men and women stammer and stagger from behind executive buildings; we watched children pine on the street corners; we watched pimps, whores and pushers wait like wolves for the hapless tourist to step off the block, to fall into the shadow of what was real.
"My God, it's beautiful." Despite my ragged protests; despite my accusations and my hatred and the newly developed bile that was gagging and ripping and exploding towards the tip of my tongue, i agreed. "Yeah, it is."
By way of taxicab, we made our way to a forelorn parking deck on the edge of forever. The potomac glistined like rabid eyes from beyond the chipped pavement below. The yellow caution lights that came from the greedy good deeds of city commisioners and federal lawmen gleamed off cement slabs and tinted windows; her car waited morosely at the far edge of the deck. License plates and flat tires guided us through rows of lookalikes and copycats, status symbols on weels. We filled our journey with chit-chat and small talk. We recalled days long past, and days soon to pass us by. Through openings in the cement, we watched the transgressions of a sidewalk society. The property exchanged in blood, the morals for money. I watched children squandered and money burned to ash. I watched negligence, and I watched hate.
I watched her open the car door, and i loved her.
"Tonight we're going home."
III
We woke up drunk and disorderly in a cheap motel. The dusty fan swung idly overhead, filling the empty space between us and the television with a squeaky rattling that seemed to echo on the verge of insanity. The news reporter's mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Only the sounds of rockets and sadness and oil tankers exploding off the coast of maine. There weren't words anymore, only the travesty of human negligence, and the disasters of human mindfullness.
A sort of grey, obstinate hopelessness decayed the pricipals that schools and institutions had ingrained in us. No matter how much the billboards and beer commercials assured us that the world was a better place, the death tolls and the car-bombings kept getting higher, and my high hopes kept getting lower. Her hand found mine, and for three brief, shining seconds, I wanted to cry. Whether or not she could see, the television ate at my consciousness. Could she see it? Could she hear it? Was she even paying attention to that box of pessimism at all?
Or was this just the vodka talking?
I couldn't be sure, really. There's no way to be sure, any more. There are no checks, there are no balances. Only the gut-feelings and instincts. You have to trust your instincts in this dog-eat-dog-eat-man world out there. The winos and the hookers are the kings and queens of the streets, and if you can't trust them, who can you trust?
Nobody, really.
Your religion is a fiction, your governors are liars. Your drugs are a placebo, this music is a cancer. Your drinking yourself to hatred, and I swear to God you're pushing us all into this blender, and I won't go down without at least a fifth of scotch in my stomach. I swear to God I won't let the clouds pass me by without spiting the sun one last time. I swear to God.
You can keep swearing to God, but eventually, He just doesnt give a damn about those four-letter words you spew like vomit. Pretty soon, God starts dishing bak what He's been dished, and God have mercy on you if you should walk under the shadow of that wrath.
After all, you can only stare at the sun so long before you go compleely blind.
You can only drink away your vision so much, and that's the lession I learned one dusty September morning. She veered dangerously in and out of consciousness, and I hovered ominously in the center of a dimly lit motel room, where cigarette smoke and empty moans haunted the doorway like demons in the darkest corners of my mind. Like the memory of some forsaken child who hung on just long enough to stab his girlfriend in the face and hurl her off a cliff then jumped off after her. Such is the way of humanity, though.
With all the majestic flourish of a fool, I got out of that hard bed, and floundered around for pants and a jacket. Without showering, without slowing even to brush my teeth or apply this useless deodorant, I grabbed twenty dollars and fell down the curb into the limbo of the Beltway motel's front parking lot.
I stole a bike, and I damned myself to prison for theft, and for destruction of private property, or some other such nonsense.
Was she lying asleep in that bed? Was she even aware that I had woken up, that I had put on my shoes and my jogging pants?
Did she know where I was going?
Or doesn't she have to know?
Do I know what I'm thinking?
I've got twenty dollars and enough cheap booze to keep me dead long enough to see winter.
I've got enough of this below my belt, and all I need is a final push to the last hurrah. One more downhill slope until I can stand, finger raised high abouve my head, in a triumphant salute to the mongrels and the tramps, and offer the world a chance to go fuck itself.
But I cry with the subtlety of a machine gun, and I laugh with the occurrance of a lunar eclips. Through pressed lips and clenched fists, I damn the pavement and I curse the birds. I shake broken hands at broken people, and they give me broken smiles.
I still say there's enough water in this green Old world to kill us all and end it.
IV
I rode my brand new bike into town. I stayed on the sidewalk, while commuters waited at bus terminals and metro lines; while car-poolers fought their way through sidewalk congestion like blood cells in the arteries of a bacon lover. And I cut through them all. My wheels became machetes, my handlebars became a grip. I pushed my ay through the hustle and rush of downtown, with jets and helicopters to serenade me; ambulances and squad cars joined in to create an orgasm of sound, a four-part harmony that sang the lament of inner-city.
A psycologist (William Pierre Ender, M.D.) once told me I romanticize everything. I enjoyed the pills while they lasted.
So with downtown acting as a high-fidelity stereo system, and my wheels acting like machetes, I chopped my way through the dormant jungle of downdown. The monuments glared at me, the faces of leaders and doers hateing me silently behind concrete expressions, locked forever in a gaze of dissaproval. I hated their faces. I could not bring myself to deface a monument, save for those judgmental, hateful faces.
I didn't know where I was going. I still don't.
"dear morning pedestrians: Give me your eyes so that I may see; give me your tongues so that I may speak; give me your hands so that I may love; give me your heart so that I hate you endlessly, forever and ever amen."
My response came in the form of a hum; an electric buzz of engines and conversation. I didn't understand what they were saying to me. The only intelligible answer a crowed can give you is ignorance, and no matter what dialect or language you speak, it all translates into exclusion, anyways.
The potomac, that rabid river of glass shards and plastic, bird-killing rings, guided me to a bridge, where I could watch the planes take off all morning. It struck me as odd, as I stood there, bike leaning aginst the railing, that all those people were flying away from whatever is was they were leaving behind. That there was something they were leaving behind. Why leave anything behind? What's worth leaving behind? You can't leave love, or life, or anything at all behind. Because if you run, you're a coward.
I got back on my stolen treasure and rode it all the way back to the motel.
V
"This all reminds me too terribly much of my trip to Niagara Falls, when I stood at the front of the Falls, and I stared down into what everyone kept calling the 'abyss,' and I wondered, if you stare into the abyss, does it stare back into you? But I guess that's the problem, because I couldn't really tell. You can't tell with abysses and stuff, because there is no eye to stare into. You're stareing into empty space. Is it possible for empty space to stare back at you? I guess it could, if you wanted it to, but I don't want it to. If you don't want it to happen, don't let it happen. So the Maid of the Mist just kinda hung about underneath the Falls, and the onlookers looked on with their blue ponchos, and I laughed because they all looked so goddamn rediculous. They looked so goddamn ridiculous, all those Canadians and Americans and Japanese and Chinese people, because they wore those silly blue ponchos, and that the American flag just kept a-swayin' and swayin', but it wasn't swayin' for anybody. It was swayin' because the wind was tellin' it to sway. There's no rhyme or reason anymore, you just follow the wind, ya know? And I guess that's why Clifton Hills hurt so bad. Because I saw you standing there, by all the horrorshows and all the side-shows and that calliope kept playing, and the hard rock was comming from the Hard Rock Cafe, and you were so beautiful. I had to talk to you. I had to talk to you. I'm glad we talked, because I kept staring into that abyss, you know, and there were all those people, just standin' there, just standin' there, and you know they all had one thing on their mind." 'When is this loon gonna jump?' so I guess it didnt remind me of anything at all, other than dredged up recollections of a time that never happened. Flights of fancy I romanticized and realized all too soon, and made a scenario up out of nothing."
She always did everything with the most patient hand. We'd followed each other around ever since I never met her at Clifton Hills, where the casinos and the amusements are in Niagara. She was the only person that had ever patiently smiled at me, and I loved her. I didn't want to let her go. She could leave, but she'd always come back. I always had to ask her to please leave, but she always came back. It was like we were connected or something....
