The Fulcrum of Civilization.
Deep, deep, deeper into the empty summer mind at midnight. Til it’s just an imaginary clickety clack of the queen of hearts stuck in the broken spokes of my metaphysical BMX bike.
Sometimes at dusk, these song birds sound like they know everything. The louder I sing, the more they majestically send their notes to heaven. Mine proceed to sluggishly bounce like deflated birthday balloons across the living room floor. Wandering tumbleweeds of misshapen thoughts.
As the executive editor of my pocket-sized universe, I spasmodically modify the scenery in an attempt to vanquish inertia.
Dammit! A shaky wheelbarrow-life should always scramble forward, fighting, clawing, striving to place my crooked right hand on the unreachable horizon. (The left is busy with a sandwich.)
Pack and crash out the door, the roller-bag flopping to its side, staggering behind like an injured comrade, across the cracks and weeded copses of bluestone sidewalks. Follow the cigarette-butt trails, the shattered-glass galaxies, eyes up and down and all around, a wild/wide-eyed escape to monolithic living. All the way down to the city on the the most expansive earthbound chariot conceived by modern-day mortals!
I type these, the first few words from my shrunken, smudged seat on a Trailways bus. I make my escape from the lush, calm countryside and into the vertices — the ocular explosion, unmistakably electric, shuddering with a fever pitch thrum. Summoning a shock to my circuitry at the fulcrum of civilization!!!
NYC. The unparalleled silver radiance, refracted, reflected shards of skyscraping sunlight. The choreography of a million floating souls, all inapposite and angular and spastically sparkling. Tripping and falling out the hydraulic bus door into the maelstrom. Golly and gosh.
A Short Conversation With The Everyday Amnesiac Inside My Mind.
(It hits quick and hard as I bow to the chaos and dance into the fire.)
Do you remember why you pulled up stakes and headed for the hills? Those subway platform anxiety attacks, the insurmountable price of everything, the commoditization of each word? Whiskey for the nerves, the constant depths of the deepest breaths. Neighbors grouse about the slightness of one acoustic strum while subwoofers emote floor-shaking, Shakespearian moans.
The midtown meetings decked to the gills with sushi and superlatives. Small talk lassoes, handshakes, hat tips, high fives. A deceivingly free lunch attached to every single specie of self-proclaimed expertise: publicist, manager, agent, lawyer, sea serpent. (Good afternoon Mr. Lake, Mr. Jörmungandr is ready to see you now.)
In the end, the answer is to slip the headphones on and score the city-world the way it works best. From lightning bolt cacophony to quiet valleys down low between the tracks, complete control suddenly and unsarcastically makes a surprise appearance from within.
Despite every sparked blitz of external information, the true transformation remains internal. From the inner crimson seas of slogging organs, to the outermost heavens, far above and beyond the realms of sin-prone skin — alternate realities of perception are as quick as a blink and as prompt as pressing PLAY.
Deep, deep, deeper into the empty summer mind at midnight.