| Wishing I was a superhero, then my mind burns itself |
[Tuesday
23:45, 20th, May, 2008] |
I was walking round the corner, out of the train station, thinking about lighting a cigarette. There were three men on the other side of the road. Immediately I saw that they were drunk and not to be trifled with. They were trying to cross, drunkenly negotiating and dodging the traffic. They stumbled.
One of them stopped to ask a gentleman for change. The gentleman was one I recognised. He walks home with headphones on and walks like there’s something wrong with him; he’s a big fellow. He shakes his head vigorously. “No change.” The drunk starts shouting at him. Already I feel sick. I have walked into drunks before and have not come off well. They’ll snap you up. When you stare into their eyes, there is absence and a waiting deathbed with nothing else. They stood in front of me, blocking the pavement. They were wolves, salivating and rabid, waiting for me. I crossed the road on trembling knees.
You are yellow, I thought to myself, looking over my shoulder. I felt dismal. The sun was there but that cold wind was coming off the sea. I cannot wait to leave you behind, mean old sea wind. I tried to light my cigarette and watched the flame flicker with my fingers.
I sat down with my beer and Leonard Cohen playing through the speakers. I sat at my modest desk, freckled with white paint and black ink, and tried to draw. My strokes were too small. Before, I could do sweeping strokes that captured every curve just to my liking. I will work on that: getting my strokes to come from my wrist just to my liking. But after staring at my drawing, sweating from anger and disappointment, I struggled not to tear the page to shreds as I would when a child. I was burning up and all because of passion. I dashed outside and glugged my beer and coughed in my cigarettes. My head was in my hands.
P.S. I wish I was the Human Torch. Nobody’d mess with me then.
P.P.S. Thinking I should be Bukowski or London. Thinking I should be Lautrec. If the world doesn’t turn me inside-out-mad, I will myself with mad aspirations.
|
|