Chapter 1

Come; dry me out, because I’ve been drinking all day, and now, with the colors fading in the night sky--while sitting outside a restaurant--I chronicled the sun, just a course outline; a city as it hurried along, leisurely; a conversation, displaced; and, a story of moments otherwise adrift, subtle and unnoticed. Surrounded by people I do not know, at least, no more than they knew me, and we would occasionally catch glimpses of likenesses, a rare beauty; in between first draft moments outlined and scribbled on notebook paper, college ruled. We would make eye contact and offer a half smile, nod our heads in some form of acknowledgment then continue sifting or drawing, if you will, a portrait of life, of passersby. There was a girl with a lit cigarette, that seemed to stay so unusually long; forming charcoal silhouettes and only catching my attention as a headlight illuminated the smoke and now crisp evening air. I took a deep breath. She kicked me under the table and coughed, while laughing. She exhaled. Her elbow was propped on the table and her hand bent backwards with the cigarette between her pointer and middle fingers. She tapped it and the ash was caught in a wind from a passing car circling first in the air then sailing behind her. She was waiting for something. A feeling I got from her after a few drinks. My mind wandered off. “Is it possible...” I said, aloud, “...to be in love while grasping at the idea that love is beyond our level of comprehension?” I interrupted an otherwise perfectly content evening, and with no response took a sip of something warm, I felt it immediately throughout my body. I stole her cigarette and took a drag. “Perhaps the universe is trying to get my attention.” I stated, while exhaling, but not posed as a question, it was directed, rather, as an answer to their silence, as an answer to my own question. An argument was progressing in the streets behind me. “...or is it not the recognition of like passions in another that we seek but, the lust for disparity?" I asked, still talking. No one seemed to be listening. They might as well have been catching raindrops on their tongues, having missed the moment entirely. I will admit, however, that it is a blessing, at times, finding people who know when not to talk. The argument behind me began to escalate, though I cannot make out a purpose, I made a conscious decision to ignore it because if I do not make that conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to I am likely going to be miserable every time I go anywhere. Instead I would focus on this realization that seemed to be coming through me, as an idea often silently contemplated but rarely followed by any means of raw understanding. We will simply settle for its generality because neither ignorance nor a claim of certainty allow for anything more than what we cannot know. I quit talking, and instead sat there drinking too much alcohol and listening to the city. One by one each person eventually stood and left. Several drinks and a couple of cigarets later I found myself alone and intoxicated; though the cinematic effects of the alcohol were enough to keep me intrigued, howbeit, agnostic, to this portrait of life surrounding me.

 

It began to rain as I wavered home, just a drizzle at first, trickling over the city in an irregular mechanic plainness. I tried to mimic a beat with my footsteps and instead created harmony with the trickle that was not replicable. I noticed then, beside me, the rain sliding off of the curves of a shape that was not physically there. Features made visible only by the steady rain. An eye blinks to course the rain off of a brow and then drafting the outline of a cheek before running down and off a chin. There was a physique now motionless as it stares uninterrupted towards me, static and sobbing--someone of flesh and blood walked through leaving the silhouette of a person falling to the pavement as though they had never existed. Though the pool beneath where it stood still stares up at me. Still unwavering. I blink and it blinks, but the reflection of life below is not the reflection I recognize in the mirror. I think to step over it in passing, forgetting that it ever existed, but I cannot move. A reflection has paralyzed me. Between us there is a silent consultation that could not be imitated, by will, or supernal design--this creation has then become the creator after having recognized in me, transparency; as it continues to look up through, and beyond my mask, my face. The pool once divine now manifests itself into ones likeness, and is again standing, in a form familiar, yet as something foreign. This likeness whispered in my ear, words too quiet at first to infer, but as with his growing zeal articulation follows. A taunt, or challenge to recognize within me, my person. Incidentally I find it interesting that the word person comes from the latin word persona, which means mask. Maybe, being human means we can invite others to wonder what it is that lies beneath; creating a conscious decision to welcome transparency with those that are connected to us, a reflection of ourselves otherwise unfamiliar to us. We may all then be composed of a variety of masks, and if we could get an honest glimpse behind that mask we would get a burst of clarity and if that flame were bright enough, that is when we would truly recognize love. It had begun to pore and I could no longer see a difference between my reflection in the rain and of myself. I stood there watching people, getting wet, and casually happened, on foot, in a direction unfamiliar to me.

Countering certain affects I lay, reposed, on some patio with a bottle of wine as the rain beat down on the city at the tail end of dusk. I gave up on my intention to go home. Content, instead, with sitting on a bench along the street listening to the city after the rain, everything moved slower and people spoke quieter as a rain tapers off. I overheard a brief interjection of a conversation between a small group of university students that was entirely to interesting to ignore. One posing a question to anyone listening:

 

"…well, then, how is it that though we are all human, and essentially the same, a person can claim with absolute certainty that they can know something as profound as God when another person cannot?”...

 

"...God I love you," looking to the sky I really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or another." To the children and the innocent it's all the same," ...with arms raised towards the heavens he bellowed without hesitation as everyone walked away, laughing.

 

I sat staring into the cosmos thinking of those before me. They would be waiting, restlessly, as a train settled uncomfortably on the track, warm still, from the steam, thick and covering the platform, so thick even they could no longer make out the faces of those around them, they would be only silhouettes dissolving into the shade like acid softening on their tongues. Never intending to go anywhere they would instead stare up into a similar sky thinking about their forgoers, and people they would never know. I imagined them as people hard fought for spare time, writing books, and listening to records while waiting for something that they were never going to find. Waiting for midnight. Dark clouds were swimming, still, above our heads, I was waiting for my own midnight. A frigid wind is challenging the will of the city, the moon behind the clouds both deters and inspires--one foot in front of another neither a stroll, a jaunt, or an amble, but a beat steadily inconsistent--with nowhere to go but everywhere and the only challenge coming when committing on a direction I allowed the street lights to guide me, walking in whichever direction a progressive symbol would appear. When you stare at one thing long enough it becomes something else; it becomes a shadow of something you are, an echo of something you where and a glimmer of something you ought to be. I imagined, while walking, as if I was a character composed of a medley, that of an authors imagination; brought to life by the creation of a story in virtue of a readers appeal and semblance. I was also the reader who by, acting as protagonist and observer, is responsible for redesigning themselves, and the story, while negotiating the authority of the story. A story that manifests itself as a reality apparent only by, myself, the conscious observer moving forward through life by means of the path ahead of me. A path both allegorical and perceptible in that it is symbolic to the means in which a life is lived, but also apparent to any corporeal path by means of a mutual decision to acknowledge the validity of that path. It is, however, unlike any other path in particular that one might be familiar with only in that as I traverse it, obstinate and assured it guides me in the general direction of my waking unconscious; this path, in other words, is incipient, creating itself cognitively from my mind, as it designs, and redesigns itself for me, the wanderer, because of me, the wanderer.

 

"It looks like rain..." The Old Man hummed, in my direction, interrupting my thoughts. There was something bucking about him--he was bird-like and nervous, however not without an air of experience and intention. A wind-up bird. In demand of winding. Looking up and about in reactionary response, not knowing at first if his remark was cautionary and intended to prepare me for the coming rain or as an observation of the immediate circumstances..."but, it's already raining." "Indeed." Again humming as The Old Man wandered off, trailing, "lullabies, look in your eyes..." Fitting, I suppose, I returned to my thoughts...

 

...realizing, now as much as ever, that any given moment is actually an image designed from previous experiences and is essentially a creation of my sub-conscious; I am left responsible for creating and living my life simultaneously as my thoughts and memories work together to develop and create my surroundings as I see fit. I feel as I progress steadily, and inconsistent, through the street as if I am the literary creation of the unrealized dreams of a collective unconscious. I am creating a reality inspired by the memories, experiences, and the abandoned pathos of the city. That is to say that in this moment I exist because reality exists and reality exists because I exists. The rain settled, completely. The cheshire moon came out just long enough to make it's presence known to passersby, grinning above the city, knowingly, childlike and delinquent, then disappeared behind the clouds. A grin that lead me home. ©

Reviews

[stellasautelle]

nicely written :)

[Mauricio Montoya]

I'm expert when it come to wring stories, to me you're doing fine, keep on writing.

[Liza]

the intensity and tension started in the beginning and started waning off little by little....