Recollections of an Evening
As I pass through the industrial heart of a worn and broken city I am sullenly drunk on my memories. They press heavily on my chest and cut sharp against the back of my brainstem. Under-lit by orange and platinum electronic light, I wrestle with ugly thoughts and mourn past joys as massive black stacks shove flame and smoke into the night sky above me. I feel like a criminal and, like most criminals, I proclaimed reformation and begged forgiveness. My transgressions, intensely personal, were committed against those I have loved and promised to protect. I cannot punish myself enough to satisfy my guilt or remove the stains upon my mind left by my own record. I have intentionally suffered in order to be deemed worthy of absolution.
But a cry for mercy is a proclamation of weakness and I am not weak as I was before. I do not beg for pity, I ask for the attention to detail an artisan would give their finest works. I request the sort of understanding that I have so effectively avoided for the majority of my life and have rarely received as a result. I wish to be far away from this misery and I want to take the best of people with me as more than just a memory. I was fabulously mistaken to think that suffering would ever earn me clemency. Sometimes iniquity is a fabrication by the dull and dreary to condemn that which they find alluring but dangerous. I may be a little corrupt and even treacherous, but I am vastly enthralling. I know better than most that the most attractive things in life are also the most vexing.
I leave a bar, annoyed and full of drink. An hour earlier, I was hearing awful things from some people that I normally respect and many that I never could. Tales of romantic woe, general stupidity and oneupsmanship seemed to be the theme for the night. I have absolutely no desire to listen for another second of someone telling me the intimate details of their life that they’ve deem unique or important. I never requested a dissertation on the banal minutia of a life that I’ve never once cared about. I want a conversation about philosophy, art, anthropology, ethics or politics. I am tired of seeing people force a swagger and spout ignorance and monotony. I should never have to see another guy in a white baseball cap tell his friends all about the “slut” that he spent the night with or hear the drunken bragging of a girl on her twenty-first birthday.
Outside, the night air is cool and my chest hurts. A coughing fit begins and hold a hand to my mouth as a meaningless courtesy to the other drunks. I check my palm for blood and find none on this particular occasion, so I go for a stroll while my body absorbs some ethanol. There is a little relief before more pain returns to my trunk and I feel compelled to clutch my ribs as I walk back to my motorcycle. I bump into an old acquaintance well before I get there. She stops me in the middle of the street and asks me where I am going and compliments me on my hair. I imagine a truck hitting us.
Some schlub that vaguely resembles Fred Mertz approaches us and engages her in conversation; I use the opportunity to make my escape. As I continue my walk, I look through the scraps of paper in my pockets. They are covered with the notes I’ve written over the past week. I crumple up half of them and toss them into the trash; they were ideas not worth pursuing and thoughts not worth expressing. They seemed pretty good at the time though. I think a lot of things are like that. Maybe they’ll be good again later on.
But a cry for mercy is a proclamation of weakness and I am not weak as I was before. I do not beg for pity, I ask for the attention to detail an artisan would give their finest works. I request the sort of understanding that I have so effectively avoided for the majority of my life and have rarely received as a result. I wish to be far away from this misery and I want to take the best of people with me as more than just a memory. I was fabulously mistaken to think that suffering would ever earn me clemency. Sometimes iniquity is a fabrication by the dull and dreary to condemn that which they find alluring but dangerous. I may be a little corrupt and even treacherous, but I am vastly enthralling. I know better than most that the most attractive things in life are also the most vexing.
I leave a bar, annoyed and full of drink. An hour earlier, I was hearing awful things from some people that I normally respect and many that I never could. Tales of romantic woe, general stupidity and oneupsmanship seemed to be the theme for the night. I have absolutely no desire to listen for another second of someone telling me the intimate details of their life that they’ve deem unique or important. I never requested a dissertation on the banal minutia of a life that I’ve never once cared about. I want a conversation about philosophy, art, anthropology, ethics or politics. I am tired of seeing people force a swagger and spout ignorance and monotony. I should never have to see another guy in a white baseball cap tell his friends all about the “slut” that he spent the night with or hear the drunken bragging of a girl on her twenty-first birthday.
Outside, the night air is cool and my chest hurts. A coughing fit begins and hold a hand to my mouth as a meaningless courtesy to the other drunks. I check my palm for blood and find none on this particular occasion, so I go for a stroll while my body absorbs some ethanol. There is a little relief before more pain returns to my trunk and I feel compelled to clutch my ribs as I walk back to my motorcycle. I bump into an old acquaintance well before I get there. She stops me in the middle of the street and asks me where I am going and compliments me on my hair. I imagine a truck hitting us.
Some schlub that vaguely resembles Fred Mertz approaches us and engages her in conversation; I use the opportunity to make my escape. As I continue my walk, I look through the scraps of paper in my pockets. They are covered with the notes I’ve written over the past week. I crumple up half of them and toss them into the trash; they were ideas not worth pursuing and thoughts not worth expressing. They seemed pretty good at the time though. I think a lot of things are like that. Maybe they’ll be good again later on.