SANE:
The small hills were quiet against the moaning cry of the wind, and the distant sighs of the rustling trees. Abandoned buildings glowed morbidly with the calm flow of the gentle snow, breezing onto forlorn scraps of garbage… beer bottles and used condoms. The hookers on the streets huddled low in their fake fur and plastic heels, click-clacking a sad, and solemn song of night and desolation. The smiles, the lazy, liquor-laden voices gave away no hint of sadness… just pure ignorance. But the eyes, the eyes were full of sorrowful discontentment, a simple inner-hatred, never to be uttered, never to be acknowledged. Only to be made known some dark and stormy night when she is found dead, lying on the ground, a pistol, hanging from her lifeless hands. Death makes the pain more evident and alive than ever before. An undeniable force that says… life is never fair.
The dark cemetery held a prescence of doom that screamed “you will fall next! Ho and be wary, you poor fool! Be wary of ghouls in black cloaks I say. Ho!” and then in one small swoop the voices leave, and you’re whole again. You’re not torn between that small space of reality and surrealistic unpleasantness. You are THERE. There as clearly as you’d always been. The forceful chill in the air stabbed knives at your skin violently; a cold that no manner of bundled up scarves or wooly cotton coats could shield you from for too long. It was an unspeakable cold. A shot of Jack Daniels to heat up the empty depths of my body was a temporary thrill of sorts. I had no purpose this sweet December night... no purpose at all but purpose itself… and I kept climbing the invisible peak of curiosity. I viewed my everyday world through shining new eyes, infantile and awkward in my gait as I clamored on. I watched the cars pass… few and far between at this ghastly hour of 3am. The distant clatter of broken glass against concrete, a scream and a shout from far off somewhere, and that constant mad roar of the “L” train as it carried it’s few passengers from one sloppy part of town to the other. One south, one west, but all essentially planned for some place, at some time--- purposely.
The night crawled around me, sick and hungry for life, and I fed it with my bitter shivering, my endless determination to find the reason… to fill the void and discover the insanity of this hike about the neighborhood. The low hum of hip hop beats from somewhere off in the distance bit at my ears and forced the lyrics into my mind, forced some feeble recognition. I knew the tune. It was classic, and easy listening, when you were warm, and surrounded by friends to talk with, and dance and sing and drink and get high, scream and make bets and curse and spit and retch over with the heftiness of too much… too much, too much! And then still crave more. Like a fiendish drone, crave more, and take more, and give less, and then mount all your frustrations on the wall and with your drunkenness shoot it all down. It was a twisted logic, but a happy one, and the only one I knew.
I didn’t know how much longer my body could withstand the cold. At the peak of the previous morning, the atmosphere had only seen a mere 30 degrees. Now at the tittermost top of the dawning new day with forecasted weather to much the same respect, the temperature is ghastly cold. I stop inside the all night dinner, which is relatively empty, on this late, Tuesday night, and order coffee, and a slice of apple pie. I wasn’t hungry, but something in me, a craving screamed for me to buy the pie and so I did. I swallowed down cup after cup after cup of strong coffee, and even cut down on the cream and sugar, and willed it to answer all the insane questions beating brilliantly against my mind. No answers. Only quiet. Only frying pans and coffee machines, and heels of tired waitresses and cash register, and door swings open and closed. And door swings open and closed again. And then I feel there’s nothing left to ponder.
The night for me did not end until I took a bus 6 miles down towards the highway, and continued the walk the rest of the way. I sat on one of the several diagonal columns that lay untouched under the highway viaducts, aside from little scraps of worthless graffiti that spelled out names or insults or cries of head-war. Petty doodlings that had no meaning besides to pass the time. I took back another shot of Jack Daniels, and the cool, mild burn of it went RRRAAAHHH against my throat, and slid slowly into my belly. The cars rolled by agonizingly slow, pulled down by some unseen force so that I could see and decipher and hear the stories of each driver. I knew their lives in 60 seconds, and then forgot their existence just as quickly. So what was to fill the void? What was the reason? What now, that night has forced me ass down on a cold, concrete column, counting cars then loosing track? What comes next? Quiet I suppose, with isolation, and then frustration, denial... pure insanity several times… and then finally… letting go.
