He is cloaking down these ruddy streets now, body slicing through the frosted breeze or tropical heats. Very difficult to tell which on any given day. Footsteps fall and billows of air spiral out from beneath them, curling fingers striping his paths but always outwards, never collapsing back in upon him to cradle his direction with any sense of resistance (if straying), or purpose (if keeping), which could perhaps be considered the same thing after all.
Exhaustion is setting in. He lifts his eyes from the grained and gray slabs of concrete below his feet; it is now 10 AM and he has been gradually receding into the day, much like the shadows in seams of this sidewalk....sinking downwards into passivity, thoughts draining down his body and mingling with the brute imperatives of the terra firma below. The head bone may be closer to the sky bone, but the earth has a seductive way with words and a gravitational ace up its you-know-what.
Eyes lamping slowly, hazily, like chinese paper lanterns strung over a small collection of indifferent powerlines. He sees souls scattered here and there. Now they are there and here; they careen like pinballs unlocked by the raw, compressed energy of a quarter. Every other one has a briefcase filled with ambiguous and rattling contents. These people very much enjoy rattling in one way or another. Mostly they move in straight and orderly lines, so he doesn't have too much problem keeping some semblance of distance at any given time. This is not to say that he hasn't had his shins tapped by the occasional car bumper when trying to cheat the hedge-maze, as it were, horns blaring angry social-ruptures as he lopes across a one-way. But he begins to get the hang of all this again.
After all, it was only yesterday that he felt the comforting drumming of the city sounds, the wavering crescendo of every moment, the invigorating pipings of the littlest things....a tea kettle searing steam behind distant doors, the creak of an armchair as it accompanies a reclining mind. Today, this morning, the clouds have rolled in. Some slinking, feline despair has curled up deep within him and must, must make itself known; scraping, raking his insides like the hollow of a pumpkin, invalidating the slightly-tipped triumph or ennui of an average city-dwelling day and replacing it with a bitter smokiness that seeps through any sense he might employ.
He knows for a fact that part of the 'problem' is that he refuses, on some level, to fight this feeling. On some level, he may even encourage it. But it bristles him; the part of him that seeks to do what it sees, that yearns for approval.
to be continued maybe.
1 comment:
Bravo on getting some words of fiction down on the page. I find it nearly impossible to do so these days with all the demands of the adult world floating around.
I like the idea of exploring the city/individual relationship. Good start.
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