Quietness In California

[izeveryboyin]

Picture a road. There is nothing but quiet darkness, a street-lamp to either deserted crosside. The police and fire headquaters was a mass of desolation, empty, cold, as if no crime in life had ever been committed nor would ever be again. The small strip of convenience stores, that in my drunken stupor, I could not count. My brown eyes were drowning in the parking lot across the street, trying to focus on the rows and columns of ghost cars, and speeding air. A little ways down, there was a line of palm trees, all swaying in the California breeze. The hotels had all guarded up their doors, and the guests were fast asleep beneath used sheets. And here I was, sipping tequila from an emptied out Sprite bottle. There was a chill in the air.
Fifty-five degrees in this quiet Burbank neighborhood, Third & Orange Grove...and I was smelling all the sweetness, all the tar, all the stone walls, and dust, and earth, and broken pieces flying from construction. All the smells of pizza and burgers, and colas and hotdogs from small fast food joints, sharks waiting for hungry tourist fish. I stumbled up off the curb and stood in the street. It was so empty. Near or far there was not a car in sight, and I shivered at the awe of it.
My blurred vision took me stretches down the road and back, and 7 miles had been conquered by my tired feet before I knew which way was north or south. A taxi sauntered by, and at this wee 2a.m hour, the metro had more or less shut down all city service, with bus lines to and fro coming slow or not at all. I sat on a park bench and waited. Waited for sobriety, waited for a way to hope and an escape from desparation, desolation dying on the plain. I waited for sunrise to tell me it's story. To tell me the faces it had seen, the tears, the awe, the anger, the world was at it's backside, it's frontside, it's left, it's right. It would sing me a song of whiskey and mystics and men, and about the believers and how the whole thing began. In a stroke it would be my salvation from the hellions of the night, and I would no longer be alone.
My hostel was miles away, and yet, I had no desire to get back there. I found peace, quiet in this park. The very same one that in the morning, leaving, failed to remember it's name. The same one that to this day, even in spite, could find my way back there as if I had burst into the earth right upon it's crevices. As if I had screamed for my mother, cursed at my father, and grabbed the balls of life to fuck the world right there in that very spot. I breathed there. I breeeeaaaathed there.
When 5a.m hit, and the sun would peak out from it's hiding place, knocking the moon into submission the way abusive lovers would, I found my sense in little steps away from this tranquil place. The morning joggers were some, already beginning to make their way into the park, and I would descend, still slightly tipsy, and awestruck, as once great Jack did in years passed, to find a diner, and eat, and drink coffee, and wake up and come to life. To live and then to die in the arms of some ridiculous ramble, and then to hop on my plane and move on. Forgive me, desolation, insanity, isolation, reclusiveness... For I depart, and I come to life, around you, die one night in sanity's arms, and try to live again.

[mnaz]

I liked this one. Honestly, I've been there. I like how you conveyed a sense of "roving consciousness" related to a drunken state, where the attention drifts or jumps around from one scene/thought to another randomly.... sometimes a blur, sometimes a captured image....

thanks....

[izeveryboyin]

Thanks. I'm glad you caught that I what I was trying to convey. I was hoping to come across in a way that held nostalgia, tried to tie in every scent and sound and how nothing is truly coherent because during intoxication, we find ourselves at odds with good sense and focus. Anyway, thanks for reading!!!