I tried to fly. With body against my bike, pedals turning furiously, I put my head down and when I looked up, I had taken flight. The streets were silent, nearly deserted in the night and I made them mine. After a while I stopped noticing the wheels beneath me completely, and simply turned miles. I imagined the ghosts of the day wandering the sidewalks and parks, and tried to listen to the words they might say. Hobo’s and homeboys and ever color collar, they milled about mostly oblivious to one another. I fly through the lights, through ghostly visions of traffic jams and lovers holding hands, around the occasional tourist out searching for sights.
I turn into the circle at break-neck speeds, sure that my wheels are just about to betray me, and then I balance out, the curve back around is gentler somehow, but I keep two fingers on each brake with a bit of measured doubt. I catch the eyes of a late-nighters, perched on the center stairs. They all seem to look right through me, barely aware I’m there. Watching the movement rather than the object, the motion rather than the person.
I came around a corner and caught a couple making out. Well-past closing time it made a little sense, but what happened next, I still have trouble figuring out. When they saw me, riding quietly down the road, I caught their eyes for just a second or so. I wanted to say hello but before I could say a word, the man put his arm over her shoulder, and they shrunk further away from the curb. I just laughed at it at the time, but had trouble getting it of of my mind.
As I tossed the bike over my shoulder to retreat to my apartment since the night had gotten colder, I wondered what my new-found neighbors think of me. I thought about the night-owls, probably still perched there on the stairs, and the things that they must see. I thought about that couple shrinking away,and, if asked about me, what my friends would say. I make my way through the mess that in a matter of days had become my apartment.
On the couch, nearly passed out, I remember a thing one of my old friends from a few lives ago used to talk about. He explained that getting high was like becoming aware of this guy in your mind who’s up there controlling everything you do, and it’s his voice when everything else is quiet, it’s that guy you sometimes get caught talking to. Sitting alone in my apartment, stoned from exhaustion, I wonder if he’s right.
People argue over what separates human from animal, from the fact that humans can think in the abstract to that that they can consider God. Essentially the same things, but vastly different when you get down to the brass tax of what they really mean. Differences on that subjects aside, it seems to me, that it really could be, this little fellow in your mind. Our eternal narrator, a voice entirely internal that doesn’t doesn’t sound a thing like the occasional orator, or are we just not yet aware of theres. Could our pets be pondering philosophy behind I our backs, could we eventually outdone by the free-time of cats?
It seems doubtful that anything truly conscious of its freedom would really willingly put its fate in the hands of a teenage human. Yet, remembering that couple on the sidewalk, and the words I didn’t really need to hear them talk, I can’t help but think about the trouble it’s caused us. It seems outlandish to imagine, that passion might be better off without ration, as just a moment to moment indulgence of curiosities, and marking territories, the occasional humping of things. Somehow it sounds a little utopian to those who always work every weekend, and spend full dollars of their time on a 2 week return of a dime; before taxes.
In the end, though, I liked falling in love, even the part about falling out. I like walking around in the rain, to try and make sense of all the pain, even when I never do. For all the stress it sometimes causes I like going to work and helping people with their problems. I’ve even found ways to love school, by understanding that it’s not about something they print on a fancy page, but the way you make what you’ve learned into a more powerful tool, and no can ever take it away. These days I like trying out my wings when the opportunity arises, gives me time to consider the bigger things like the heroes inside of us, and why we try to hide it with silence.