First Chapter
a departure
A handful of flies buzz around me like curious black rain. The dusty stream of light colours me old as canyons of time expose themselves, their shadowy knife edge folds unbreaking my skin. I sit alone, staring at nothing, thinking of even less; caught in that gap between daydream and reality. My apartment cell is dusky and barren, the couch a great stranded ship in the middle of the hardwood ocean floor. The television sits vacant flanked by two sturdy speakers that say nothing. At the base of the chair in which I sit is a strewn heap of photos, the remains of my late night search for lost memories, for evidence to prove that I have been.
I am drawn from the chair and my dream like state by church spire chimes of passing time. Walking out to the balcony, I look down upon the grainy hopelessness of this beat dead world, and observe with disinterest the ant like bustle of those below. This city often reminds me of my childhood abode, with its dusty corners, rickety forgotten places now infested, and routes that cut through their over-thought proximities, worn and weary. With evening fantastically consuming the sky in what I can only describe as a deepening shade of blue, my eyes capture the amber ember called Moon, which hovers and I swoon.
With reluctance I return from the balcony and close the door which sighs as it slides. Lifting a jacket from the back of the chair, I discover an unfinished cup of tea upon the floor. Consuming what remains, I feel the cold beverage rush to the bottom of my stomach.
Once in the hallway and with the apartment door seemingly secured, I walk toward the elevator as only an echo, each sound resounding between the walls as though liquid. Habitually, I ride to the third floor, emerge from the elevator, stroll down the hallway and egress via the fire exit. All this to avoid the lobby with its adjoining lounge where a strange socialless group sits near motionless, with blank stares for everyone passing their room of contentedness; never conversation, just cold contemplation. Reaching the fire escape, I descend the staircase with a clung, clung, clung of feet upon its pocked and moulded surfaces. The craggy, lunar, nighttime alley is a street of solitude lined with decaying storage huts and wooden fences, their faces peeling. My rattly chariot waits for turn-key; it gives its guttural purr of imperfection.
Bouncing elastic over the sinuous back street I eventually converge with the roadway where I pulse pneumatic along the city’s black veins, the buildings passing like yesterdays of today. Humming, thumbing queens hang out on donut house corners of lust in tight tatters and fur collars, peddling their after-dinner wares. Beyond building loom and construing business types, almost invisible behind towering shop signs is the old cathedral, a nighttime ghost illuminated by two skyward lamps of moon glow. The road bends with great, lazy highway curves that sweep around the monastic fallacy toward the unattainable horizon.
A transport grumbles past the side window to my right. I see pink snouts twitching from the perforated, metallic walls, then the holocaust box fades ahead into the breezy night. Lane markers fly by like b-movie bullets and I veer onto an off-ramp which bends a great licorice bend and delivers me on.
- 11/26/07
- Arquivos
- 6 comments
Comments:
Permalink 12/04/07 @ 22:34 Not many phrases stick with me, but it's been a year since I read this, and I recall it every time I am forced to pose for a picture.
Permalink 11/08/08 @ 03:01 This post has 7 feedbacks awaiting moderation...
