Let Me Fly
Friday, August 8th, 2008
Not high, just creative …
Constant thronging from the sleeveless laborers woking jackhammers and machinery up the block lifts me off the cold bedsheets and through the window. Bubbling as my body sucks past the plain, the pliable glass is my gateway out above the city, where I hover for a moment while the force decides where to pull me. Airy and ethereal, it floats me slowly over the tarred and antaened rooftops of stunted buildings, by the cracked flower circles that are spun into the mosaic buliding ledges, past the smoked and mirrored glass in the taller structures where I can’t see but instead picture office workers lost in mindless business, balancing coffee on bellies, slumped in poor typing posture. Below is the entire city grid and streetscape, manholes dark and obvious in the asphalt streets, blemishes – imperfections – in the city’s aerial complexion. Time has seemingly locked up, but I can tell it hasn’t in the real world where I cab still distinguish taxi cabs by the yellow rooftops and the people who move in tiny black pinholes across intersections and up and down sidewalks. Minutes ago – what in real time could be hours ago – I was asleep on the 18th floor of what used to be the Federal Reserve Building that has since been converted to upscale, cosmopolitan lofts. The coffers once kept in the basement were filled with skids stacked with millions of dollars in gold bars and cash. Buried beneath the city block, locked behind vaults, all the money in the world and no freedom. No love. No view. I’m not afraid. I’ve finally lost the need for material possessions and the lost burden has separated me from gravity. The sun has slipped down the sky right at the place where the orange and pink hues combine in golden rays, each one distinguishable to the naked eye. Like lightning, they pierce my body and hold me, just for second, as though I were voodoo doll against cork board.
