The Thrill is Gone
Friday, Sept. 17, 2004 12:01 am
27 Aug 04 Friday
I can't stand the smell of the city. I've tried to aestheticize it, like I have with the lights and their subtle, malicious grins in the corner of my eye. Like I have with the noise and it's hissing. The filth in the alley ways. But I can't adjust to the smell. It's not over powering, it's just parasitic, a leech. It creeps over and invades you. A sickly-sweet potpourri of trash and piss fermenting under the swell of relentless inner city summer humidity. I can't adjust to it.
I've seen pidgeons eating vomit. Flies swarming away as I pass by a foot ball sized rat flattened into a pancake. The homeless' matresses covered in urine, shit and rust stains. The scratching of rats inside a dumpster as I walk by. The zombies that lurk, stalk, wait, stare.
Woke up with the feeling that you get after losing a fight the previous night. A stomach churning mix of shame and disappointment. The feeling of waking up from a bad dream, and just as the panic starts to set in, you realize it was just a dream. Except this time, the panic sets in and you realize you had no dreams last night, and everything is how you'd wish it wasn't.
This morning, I felt disappointed.
This evening, I feel beaten.
The worst is yet to come. The best has yet to come.
The alley between those two sentences is where I'm walking. Unable to adjust to the smell, numbed to it's nauseating filth.
Keep walking. Just walking.
last five:
A Winter Letter - Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007
almost but not quite - Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2006
rural times, blue skies. it feels so warm over my hair - Wednesday, Jun. 01, 2005
smiles and gone - Monday, Feb. 07, 2005
I caught my love in North Carolina - Monday, Nov. 29, 2004