Newyorkdiesel

new york diesel.

i slipped back into consciousness this morning by accident. freed from the constrictions of clean vision, i took only a moment to regard the deep hue of the fuzzy blue square in one corner of my room, nodded in the satisfaction that it would be a nice day, then released my grip and tumbled back into a lazy whirlpool of subconscious desires and barely-caught glimpses of memories.

consciousness reclaimed me on the other side of a dream. i rolled over to find a half-smoked bowl, lovingly left at bedside by myself the night before, lighter resting on the notebook covering at once a half-full glass of water and a half-empty glass of wine. applying fire, i emptied two and left the wine for the night.

the morning slid past, the sky's blue merely deepening with the passing of hours.

i met noon alongside a pile of things in the bus stop, child's doll waiting patiently for a bus that won't carry it anywhere, virgin mary's painted countenance keeping quiet watch from a nearby coffee mug. a broken slinky poked out of the plastic bag. the bus came.

it stopped, and i looked out the window. movie posters announcing the release dates of movies as close as may and as far as february past. the newest poster had been partially ripped and vandalized. when we began moving again, ducking under an underpass i was staring at a slideshow of graffiti, painted over and replaced uncounted times in the tireless struggle between orderly mediocrity and beautiful chaos. coming back to the sky, i looked up to see the train i'd been hoping to catch as it pulled away to the north. the sun reflected from the windows in flickering bursts, the metal drawing a graceful slash across the skyline.

as i stepped off the train a baby crawled further up her father's shoulder to lock giant, almond eyes with me. i smiled, and she smiled back. i turned forward again and found someone else smiling at me.

the library closed me out as i fired a signal flare (hoping to attract a better future), and i returned to the train without much idea on where to go. an hour later my path crossed a path taken once before, which i followed on blind memory to a coffee shop. a girl loudly proclaims being an addict as i walk in, though her substance of choice remains unnamed. me too, sister; me too.

now my bagel and yerba mate are gone, the internet has run out of beautiful things to show me today, and my body growls with anticipation - my stomach for food, my lungs for fire, my mind for stimulation, my eyes for beauty, my heart for companionship. some of these can be fixed when i leave. some will have to wait for the universe to twist again, for another facet of the thousand-faceted jewel called life to turn and face me.

often, i find that jewel will not rotate so long as i look at it. so i obscure it, hiding myself away behind a curtain of smoke.

smoke grown from something so powerful yet full of life that few words could hope to describe it as accurately as...

new york diesel.