Other evenings, other thoughts

It’s impractical to leave the house with such ominous clouds overhead. I have no umbrella. I am forever mired in such failures of imagination. I always assume that that when I step outside the rain will stop, or pass right through me like a miracle of physics. I do not carry an umbrella because I have a strange faith in the world. I constantly lie to myself saying, it’s all going to turn out fine.

The metro ride is either beautiful or dirty. I vacillate between the two. It’s often used at the beginning of films, the dirty window to communicate anomie, distance, at times I find the graffiti and the light piercing over rows and rows of wires and crumbled brick quite striking. I spot a small plastic play set with a yellow slide between two warehouses, like a fleck of gold in a pan of rock. Who built that? What could they have possibly intended? Such beautiful failures, what minute gestures.

I watch a good looking couple sit on the bench. They are both staring intently at their phones, texting people who are far away. I’m not one of those zealots who sees the end of the world in the proliferation of screens, but I want to walk over to the bench and shake them both awake. “You are young and beautiful. Look at each other.” This too shall pass.

Of late I think the city that was passed over because of the clouds. I wonder what game the children were playing that day in the street, whether it was dusty or clean. I imagine the adults sitting down to tea, to discuss the ongoing war. Who knows if they heard the buzz go by overhead. The God of Death in the form of an American plane. I wonder again, what games they were playing that particular day, who won that day that the plane passed over. 

My favorite moment, on any good night, is the moment that you realize everyone knows the song that is playing. The music is bouncing off the walls and the bodies, the beautiful sweaty bodies are bouncing as well. At the part of the song where everyone is supposed to put everyone’s hands in the air, everyone’s hands go in the air because we are young and will live forever, Fuc- the darkness. The sweat from everyone in the room is one large puddle. And then the next song comes on, something strange, and everyone suddenly needs to go outside to text, or use the bathroom, and I will understand that joy is fleeting, that moments are born only to be lost.