The view from my window is priceless. My desk fronts against a three-paned window almost six feet across. At a certain angle, the view is all I see, except for off-white blurs in my peripherals and a cherry-colored accoutrement-cluttered lap to remind me I'm still here.
Across the way the Prudential Center rises into the blue, reflecting a sun-tinged liquid pillar with space-age lines and a swelling presence. Its back building rises even higher, like a sager older brother. The street corner at its base supports a few trees, and its cobblestone surface looks smooth and soft, like an old carpet.
Or is the Pru more incoming than upreaching? Abutting the crossroads with an entrance awning like a cattle catcher thrusting forward, the Pru sprawls back a whole city block, connected to the next block by a skywalk. Like two self-sustaining space ships, you almost expect the Pru and Copley to blast off at any moment. Escape pods of society, exemplifying the culture.
The traffic pattern at the intersection feels like perpetual motion, tick-tock with a new representation of time. Everybody is trying to get somewhere, but they just keep twisting circles and circles around the city, magnificently complex gears in the timepiece of the city.
Windshields, headlights, rims all glitter in the sun, avatars of people wefting their way through the warp of pedestrians, weaving comet-tails of stories.
Shopping bags, school bags, bag lunches, bag ladies, shoulder bags, baggy eyes--everything down there has its meaning, its reason for being arranged at that point in this moment. A trolly tour jangles past, pushing a yellow light to keep the tour moving steadily.
A building rises up next to me, thick concrete framing business-like layouts, ever-shining fluorescents cowering from the sunlight.
Movement catches my eyes--all three of them. A peregrine stoops away from a chasing swallow, doubles back toward the office building across the way, and circles back again, as if trying to get to something. What is the swallow hiding? Or is he just being a dick. Maybe the swallow is stealing the peregrine's nest. Or maybe protecting his own. Who am I to judge? So it is and so it shall be.
I have so much work to do on this freelance assignment, but all I want is to write some fiction. Making a living means losing the living. I should've been born a hunter/gatherer--but then the stories would all be oral, passing down through the collective conscious, sending waves of character down through the ages. Ancestry.
If i could otherwise devote the time I spend at work, I could get some serious progress down on what I really want to do. Could get those chapters rolling in. Start collecting those rejection slips to climb their sickly pink mountain to the heaven of publication. It's just a matter of catching the groove. But Catch-22 has me firmly in its clutches, and it's loving every minute of it. Cheeky bastard.
Time to work.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Therapy
It's gone. They stole it. They stole my fucking car, and now it's gone. Here I sit, face a blank page of crestfallen disbelief, passive and empty to any onlooker. I'm wearing this vacant mask to hide a molten core of rage, whose burning I can feel between my straight-line lips and in the whorls of my ears, and thumping against my scarf. But to you I appear impassive, bored.
But it's gone! I can see the little punks, rummaging with glorified coathangers between window and door, racing to see who could pop the lock first. Their flushed faces, heady with anticipation, hearts pounding.
click!
"Got it, boy," one proudly croons, dropping his jimmy and yanking the door open.
And then they're inside, talking excitedly in whispers, as they rifle through my CD collection, steaming up the windows with their nervous breath, pawing through my worthless possessions and trying to rip out the radio.
Where was I while this was going on? Probably asleep, alarm set and dreams churning, ready to spring out of bed for an honest day's labor. I wonder, did they leave the door open for a quick escape? or close it against the cold? How long did it take to splice the appropriate wires? Did they grind the sensitive clutch? Probably. Little punks.
A Honda Civic, whatever its benefits, is notoriously easy to steal. Oh my god I can't believe it's gone! I've seen a towtruck operator jimmy one open in a matter of moments, as I sipped a coffee on a restaurant patio along the street. Guy barely even looked at what he was doing.
Where were the cops when they stole my car? Probably munching Dunkin Donuts, or busting up drunken pedestrians on their way home from the bars. What are the chances they stopped any real crimes that night? Care to bet?
So my car's gone, my plans canceled--a contract broken. I'm sharing this cold aluminum bench with an ugly dwarf of a man, a shriveled old hunchback in a tattered Patriots sweatshirt whose primary movement seems to be squirting jets of tobacco juice at random intervals in the general direction of a crack in the sidewalk. The bus should be arriving at any moment, but my hands flex with longing to grip the steering wheel, to make my own way at my own pace.
So long, I worked, to afford that car, that unattainable luxury, and in the space of a few minutes, some delinquent bastards have gone joyriding, squirming their illiterate baggy jeans on my seats, smearing their fetid sweat all over the dashboard, cursing my boring music taste and wishing for some innocuous bumping hiphop.
Worthless wretches. The short-sighted government would have been better off subsidizing their mothers' abortions instead of sucking eggs on a stupid vacuous issue. Because you, John Q Taxpayer--rest assured--will end up paying for these assholes to eat three-square and sleep in sheets. I can only dream of the violent pain and irrevocable damage caused by their shower rape. I can only wish I could watch them get caught and fucked.
But for now, I suffer, the wool-blinded fodder of the American Dream.
On this cold bench I sit, listening for the grumbling diesel of the bus, feeling the hollow sucking of my soul where all my hard-earned material manifestation has been yanked away at the whim of some brat who can't see enough past the end of his fat nose to care about the harm he's causing another human.
What would his mother say?
Hell, it's probably her fault.
A young man joins us on the bench, baggy jeans flopping against the seat. I wonder if his cornrows make his scalp cold. He thumbs a cellphone, not meeting my eye as he sits. I pull out the police report and reread it for the umpteenth time, hoping for a clue, or a new bit of information, or something that doesn't tell me my car's gone without a trace and there's not a goddamned thing I can do about it. It'll probably show up gutted--
"Hey, man, you got the time?"
I turn to the youth next to me. He's holding up a darkened phone and looking at me quizzically.
"Uh, yeah," I say, looking at my cellphone. "It's nine forty-five."
"Hey lemme get that," he says, nodding at the phone.
"What?"
"Give me your phone. And your wallet, man."
"What?"
"Motherfucker, quit fuckin' around. Give me your money and your phone, and whatever else you got." He stands up, threatening.
I frown and glance toward the old man, who's up and shuffling down the street, leaving me alone with the kid. He hold out an orangutan paw, pale palm stained and clammy.
"How about right now," he mutters, twitching his fingertips as if to say Gimme or Come Here. His other hand is behind his back, ready to pull a knife or a strap.
My insides boil over, but I keep a sheen of fear on my face, the only emotion these dustbunnies understand and respect. I rise to my feet, hands out disarmingly. I don't want trouble.
"All right, all right," I nod. "Here you go. Here's my wallet."
I reach back for my wallet and shuffle closer.
Suddenly I'm upon him, throwing my entire weight behind a right cross which connects CRACK on his chin, and following through. He stumbles back, and I swing around with my left, smashing my fist into his temple. He drops to the slushy sidewalk and I'm upon him, fists flailing, red mist rising before my eyes DIE you fucking worm piece of shit--my fist again and again, socking wet and hard into his ugly brown face, drawing back and throwing myself down again, fists elbows fist fist fist blood spraying teeth bared screaming MOTHERFUCKER venting DIE as if he were the accumulation and effigy of all the evil in this world, CHOCK chock thuck tap thap the back of his head cracks and spills red DIE on the pavement, wide wet eyes cross lose focus, arms fall to the draw of gravity as his body gives up, and still I DIE thrash and flail and mash his face again and again with raw knuckles elbows bleeding breath ragged DIE DIE DIE as he goes limp beneath me, my knees soaked through with melted snow and hot blood, heart thumping fists pumping, rage throwing fireworks at his eyes, unseeing eyes, and his head cracking against the pavement with each savage blow, brap brap brap as my fists take on a life of their own, skin splitting, teeth flying, tongue bitten through, skin rent torn and bruised, losing shape just a DIE mass of blood and cells and follicles of DIE misdirected youth and MOTHERFUCKER DIE poor timing as a victim turns around, refuses to bend once more, and becomes the murderous unfettered vengeance of
"Stop!"
uncountable robberies and thefts and rapes and murders DIE and victimizations and rage as I sob and scream and thrash this fleshy pulp against the wet pavement, spilling blood and mingling slush and gore and pent-up anger resentment loss injustice and I'M GOING TO KILL THIS KID ignoring the little nagging voice You're Going To Regret This voice as I pound and pound and
"Hey, stop!"
pound and ignore the spinning world around me, focused only on the utter destruction of this worthless bag of petty crime, this blight upon the imperfect rest of humanity, the embodiment of all that's wrong in this world, and I'm going to KILL IT--
Until I look up into the cold cyclops eye of a Beretta and see this kid's homie trembling behind the trigger. He's dressed in fear and stolen Timberlands, bowing under the weight of golden chains forged in hell.
"Stop it," he says, as I sit there poised over his friend, with a ragged bloody fist. All I want is to be home and none of this ever happened. All I want is to strike again, though there's not much left to hit, I realize.
A sneer twists my lips, and this new kid twitches
FLASH
But it's gone! I can see the little punks, rummaging with glorified coathangers between window and door, racing to see who could pop the lock first. Their flushed faces, heady with anticipation, hearts pounding.
click!
"Got it, boy," one proudly croons, dropping his jimmy and yanking the door open.
And then they're inside, talking excitedly in whispers, as they rifle through my CD collection, steaming up the windows with their nervous breath, pawing through my worthless possessions and trying to rip out the radio.
Where was I while this was going on? Probably asleep, alarm set and dreams churning, ready to spring out of bed for an honest day's labor. I wonder, did they leave the door open for a quick escape? or close it against the cold? How long did it take to splice the appropriate wires? Did they grind the sensitive clutch? Probably. Little punks.
A Honda Civic, whatever its benefits, is notoriously easy to steal. Oh my god I can't believe it's gone! I've seen a towtruck operator jimmy one open in a matter of moments, as I sipped a coffee on a restaurant patio along the street. Guy barely even looked at what he was doing.
Where were the cops when they stole my car? Probably munching Dunkin Donuts, or busting up drunken pedestrians on their way home from the bars. What are the chances they stopped any real crimes that night? Care to bet?
So my car's gone, my plans canceled--a contract broken. I'm sharing this cold aluminum bench with an ugly dwarf of a man, a shriveled old hunchback in a tattered Patriots sweatshirt whose primary movement seems to be squirting jets of tobacco juice at random intervals in the general direction of a crack in the sidewalk. The bus should be arriving at any moment, but my hands flex with longing to grip the steering wheel, to make my own way at my own pace.
So long, I worked, to afford that car, that unattainable luxury, and in the space of a few minutes, some delinquent bastards have gone joyriding, squirming their illiterate baggy jeans on my seats, smearing their fetid sweat all over the dashboard, cursing my boring music taste and wishing for some innocuous bumping hiphop.
Worthless wretches. The short-sighted government would have been better off subsidizing their mothers' abortions instead of sucking eggs on a stupid vacuous issue. Because you, John Q Taxpayer--rest assured--will end up paying for these assholes to eat three-square and sleep in sheets. I can only dream of the violent pain and irrevocable damage caused by their shower rape. I can only wish I could watch them get caught and fucked.
But for now, I suffer, the wool-blinded fodder of the American Dream.
On this cold bench I sit, listening for the grumbling diesel of the bus, feeling the hollow sucking of my soul where all my hard-earned material manifestation has been yanked away at the whim of some brat who can't see enough past the end of his fat nose to care about the harm he's causing another human.
What would his mother say?
Hell, it's probably her fault.
A young man joins us on the bench, baggy jeans flopping against the seat. I wonder if his cornrows make his scalp cold. He thumbs a cellphone, not meeting my eye as he sits. I pull out the police report and reread it for the umpteenth time, hoping for a clue, or a new bit of information, or something that doesn't tell me my car's gone without a trace and there's not a goddamned thing I can do about it. It'll probably show up gutted--
"Hey, man, you got the time?"
I turn to the youth next to me. He's holding up a darkened phone and looking at me quizzically.
"Uh, yeah," I say, looking at my cellphone. "It's nine forty-five."
"Hey lemme get that," he says, nodding at the phone.
"What?"
"Give me your phone. And your wallet, man."
"What?"
"Motherfucker, quit fuckin' around. Give me your money and your phone, and whatever else you got." He stands up, threatening.
I frown and glance toward the old man, who's up and shuffling down the street, leaving me alone with the kid. He hold out an orangutan paw, pale palm stained and clammy.
"How about right now," he mutters, twitching his fingertips as if to say Gimme or Come Here. His other hand is behind his back, ready to pull a knife or a strap.
My insides boil over, but I keep a sheen of fear on my face, the only emotion these dustbunnies understand and respect. I rise to my feet, hands out disarmingly. I don't want trouble.
"All right, all right," I nod. "Here you go. Here's my wallet."
I reach back for my wallet and shuffle closer.
Suddenly I'm upon him, throwing my entire weight behind a right cross which connects CRACK on his chin, and following through. He stumbles back, and I swing around with my left, smashing my fist into his temple. He drops to the slushy sidewalk and I'm upon him, fists flailing, red mist rising before my eyes DIE you fucking worm piece of shit--my fist again and again, socking wet and hard into his ugly brown face, drawing back and throwing myself down again, fists elbows fist fist fist blood spraying teeth bared screaming MOTHERFUCKER venting DIE as if he were the accumulation and effigy of all the evil in this world, CHOCK chock thuck tap thap the back of his head cracks and spills red DIE on the pavement, wide wet eyes cross lose focus, arms fall to the draw of gravity as his body gives up, and still I DIE thrash and flail and mash his face again and again with raw knuckles elbows bleeding breath ragged DIE DIE DIE as he goes limp beneath me, my knees soaked through with melted snow and hot blood, heart thumping fists pumping, rage throwing fireworks at his eyes, unseeing eyes, and his head cracking against the pavement with each savage blow, brap brap brap as my fists take on a life of their own, skin splitting, teeth flying, tongue bitten through, skin rent torn and bruised, losing shape just a DIE mass of blood and cells and follicles of DIE misdirected youth and MOTHERFUCKER DIE poor timing as a victim turns around, refuses to bend once more, and becomes the murderous unfettered vengeance of
"Stop!"
uncountable robberies and thefts and rapes and murders DIE and victimizations and rage as I sob and scream and thrash this fleshy pulp against the wet pavement, spilling blood and mingling slush and gore and pent-up anger resentment loss injustice and I'M GOING TO KILL THIS KID ignoring the little nagging voice You're Going To Regret This voice as I pound and pound and
"Hey, stop!"
pound and ignore the spinning world around me, focused only on the utter destruction of this worthless bag of petty crime, this blight upon the imperfect rest of humanity, the embodiment of all that's wrong in this world, and I'm going to KILL IT--
Until I look up into the cold cyclops eye of a Beretta and see this kid's homie trembling behind the trigger. He's dressed in fear and stolen Timberlands, bowing under the weight of golden chains forged in hell.
"Stop it," he says, as I sit there poised over his friend, with a ragged bloody fist. All I want is to be home and none of this ever happened. All I want is to strike again, though there's not much left to hit, I realize.
A sneer twists my lips, and this new kid twitches
FLASH
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
