Some People Write Beautifully About Themselves

The following was actually written on June 10, 2005 at 3:44 AM.

Some people write beautifully about themselves. But it's all just flowers. I don't write like that. I hate crap like that, a whirlwind ultimately surrounding -- what? Nothing.

This is exactly what the following treatise is about. Nothing. No one. And it comes from nowhere. It comes from an empty nowhere, the alley in between buildings where only the occasional hobo dares to spend more than five minutes. That's how I write. I've already said too much.

Methinks. Nobody says that word anymore. Behold. Methinks. Good words. I think we need to... repopularize those words. Lo, another paragraph!

She sat in the rain with him, waiting for the bus. They chatted outside the arcade. She could hear the sound of music from a faraway part deep inside her brain. Was his name Alex? Or Mark? Somebody was a Mark. Oh, well. The music continued.

The same music was coming out of the radio of the car of a man driving back home after a long day of work. He was stuck in the usual traffic. He had just had a meeting with his boss. He had been fired. It was Friday. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe he had to go home to his wife and four kids -- four beautiful girls -- and tell them this news. He was 55. He couldn't just go out and find another job so easily. So he snapped and broke away from the traffic, making a U-turn into the oncoming lane, crashing his car to death. The police cleared the scene in about 30 minutes after arriving. It's those five minutes in between the crash and their arrival that everything in the universe happens.

French may be very romantic, but it's also a very sad language. It can sound incredibly... melancholy. It's just a language with a lot of emotion, of the squishy kind, not of the German kind. Take this song title, for example: "Une Année Sans Lumiere." Sad. Melancholy. In English? "A Year Without Light." Sounds like the title of a science-fiction series.

So the people rose up. The people always rise up. The people always triumph, little by little, but time after time. That's evolution. That's evolutionary fight. That's the human spirit. All genetic. Developed over millions of years. My train just derailed. I completely lost my train of thought.

Allow me to regather. People grow up in neighborhoods. I guess I kind of come from a rough neighborhood. But enough about me. Let's talk about what it's like to ride a bicycle. The beauty. The elegent movement. The wind. The speed. The balance. That rushing feeling. The sun coming through in patches through the canopy of leaves above. A paved road moving downhill. You don't even need to pedal. You just hold still and glide, float, fly...

I love that feeling, that feeling of freedom. Life is perfect. Sic transit gloria, though. And you hit a hill, and you have to pedal. You have to work hard for it. Your legs are tired. You can't make it up. But you refuse to switch gears. You push and push and push. You grind it out. You don't give up. You're never getting off this damn fucking bike. You're not pushing it up, you're not walking it up -- you're riding the fucking bike up. So you push, with everything you've got, and you go, and you go, and you go. And it comes, slowly, the decline of the tip, the tip, the final tap, and the other side... WHOOSH!

Jesus was incredible.

I don't want you to leave.

Intense. I can't handle this right now. Just give me a second. Thanks.

And so he fell asleep.