R A M B L E II
VI
The sun went down again, the same way it had when we first got off that metro, when we descended into hell, to those pearly gates that weren't pearly, to the handguns and to the crazies and to the judges. The jury was out, but that judge kept sitting there in his throne, staring you down, makeing you feel small in comparison to the scale of existence. Everyone's a judge, eventually, and everyone makes everyone else feel small. I just hate it when real judges do it. When the time comes to stand in front of the entire world and let the judges judge, who's really man enough to say "I'm scared?" I would. I'd say it until i was blue in the face and dying.
I'd whisper it on my dying breath, even if it meant staying alive that much longer to curse out one last syllable.
VII
How many times does the sun come up? How many times does the sun go down? How many times do we stand here? Does this end? Do we ever get to see tomarrow? Will I wake up? I swear to God I just want to wake up, but is there anything left to wake up to? Can I even shake myself out of this? Is there anywhere left to go? I can't see anymore and I think I don't want to. When do people learn? When will I learn? Can I learn? Will you let me learn? I lie well but I don't want to, I don't want to for the love of this. Please let me die here, please let me put on my shoes and walk out this door and stand in front of everything I'm afraid of and let this all just end, let's do a bang up job and let's let this be done.
When you're crazy, you think crazy things. I'm a master of it. I stand around all day and I think these crazy things; bastard thoughts that scare and intimidate the guys whith the degrees, the kind of sick twisted mind that Johnny Law is trying to scrape off the street and institutionalize. I've done my fair share of mingling with psychologists and analysts; They've poked and prodded and drugged and bound and gagged for all I know, and I'm still here, alive and kicking--a byproduct of a perfect society's obsession with the imperfect.
Every night, right before the sun went down, I had the most beautiful clarity, and I could see the craters on the moon with the most random precision. I could see stars and clouds and buildings, an none of it was muddled in what William Pierre Ender, M.D. assured me was "over romanticizing."
I knew what I was looking at.
Another city, another skyline. Another lonley 2:00 AM with the ghosts and the deamons and the neon signs. My company. My crowd. My scene.
My ball and chain.
A subtle reminder that I dragged with me from town to town, unafraid of the consequences, because I silently knew there wouldn't be any.
There aren't any when you associate with ghosts. Sometimes I wonder about my own mortality. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I was never real to begin with. Maybe I was just some lucid manifestation of people's conscious thought gone awry, and I'm the mechanization of all things temporally incorrect. Maybe I've survived the centuries from thought to thought, constantly regurgitated by the hateful, sinful deeds of everyone else. Maybe I'm just a conglomeration of sex and drugs, a walking manifestation of drunkards and burned out junkies.
"In his head it's like the weather back and forth it's like the weather back and forth it's like the weather..."
She smiles at me from behind curtains, and I can tell that I'm real. I'm real only because she makes me real. Only because she smiles, and I smile back. A constant reminder that somewhere, sometimes, there's enough beauty to will the ugliest, loveless creatures to be lovely and loving. There aren't enough pills in the world that could replace her; I'm not that insane.
No, I'll never be that insane.
VIII
With enthusiasm, I checked myself out of the cheap motel, and rode my bike down into the haunted, grey vally of downtown. Cars passed me as I made my way slowly through the most digusting, revolting avenues and streets. The escalators delivered more dead people into hell; more children, more elderly people; more hapless scumbags than you can point and laugh at.
I passed them by, because they had passed me by. I personally blamed them for everything. All my problems, all my indecisions. All these ghosts that haunted me when I wasn't aware that I wasn't being haunted; distracted by sunlight and reflections.
So where do we go from here? Where do these streets take us?
We were on the hills watching the falls; we were watching the falls and I was staring into that abyss. We just met each other but By God we were in love and there wasn't a thing in the world to take that from us--we just stood there watching those Falls fall into that abyss that was supposed to watch us back but didn't. I watched it until I thought I could vomit, and she stared into it; a reject from society that had forged her into the cast. She didn't want to be here, I know I didn't want her to be here--if I could take her a thousand million miles from here I would but you can't just do that.
Do that. Do what you want to do, because that's what you want to do.
"When is this loon gonna jump?"
She kept staring into that empty abyss, same as me. Just a big empty swirling of water; nothing more than mist and boats and people in silly blue ponchos, smiling up and takeing pictures. With enough glow in her heart, she turned and kissed me, I felt alive.
But I loked at her, and I felt her next to me. Felt like she was with me, and that was enough to reassure me. I felt content, and I haven't felt content since.
I looked into her eyes, and I turned. And the Falls; the roar of the Falls, and the mist and the moisture and those goddamn blue ponchos all flashed in front of my face, and everything swirled around. This was the empty abyss I had been staring into all week; that culmination of water and sounds and echoes, that eyeless thing that hovered right before me, but never stared back.
She was sad; I had met her while she lay crying and broken in front of the lights and he amusements and the calliope, sobbing because she was alone; I was wandering because I, too, was alone.
We're all so alone. Sing a song of sixpence.
That presence next to me vanished> I turned, and she wasn't there. I looked back into the abyss, and it had two new eyes with which to stare at me.
For the first time in what seemed like a handful of seconds and tick-tocks on some cosmic clock, we were both stone cold and alone.
So I ran from city to city, haunting hotels and motels and allyways and strangers and bottles of beer. I haunted the lonly circle of light beneath strret lamps, and I clung to the mid-summer humidity with the persistance of a ten-year-old. I wouldn't let go for the life of me. I wouldn't dare let myself become a part of this society again. Not after it had shunned us, and not after it had made her haunt me. I loved her, and she came with me everywhere.
It's through me that she can see this world; it's through me that the sun goes up and down. Without me, she'd be no more than an empty voice... a forgotten body floating in the sea of faces...this dreary, dark place. This woe-begotten world of bigotry and pride, where gluttony and lust have replaced morality and decency. Sex is a virtue; useing and abusing are feats of human nature. There's nothing subtle about this society anymore.
There's nothing decent or clean, and we're the victims.
We're the ones broken and crying in the center of all the amusements and pastimes.
we're just faces in the sea.
