He sits at Starbucks, table occupied by him, a phone, car keys, Marlboro Smooths Menthol, and his steaming cup of cafe americano. The sounds of traffic fill his thoughts as he scratches words in his notebook. Three quick flicks of his lighter and a cherry red beacon glows from the cigarette between his lips. Taking a deep breath, he lets the taste of menthol and nicotine into his system. The sounds of the world have a tendency to drown out thought, and today is no exception. The sky above him is full of emptiness. He smiles as he scrawls that contradiction; on a clear day, the sky is full of it. You know what you are truly seeing. For once his phone stands silent, a guard against those he cares for, but enjoys the public solitude he is experiencing. Lately, his thoughts and body have been constantly on the move, soothed only by lyrical genius. Now, strange as it seems, the sounds of the industrial world fill his mind, soothing and relaxing.
He thinks that today would be a perfect day for a picnic, but noone does those things anymore. They are from a day long lost to television and electronics. A day only remembered in its portrayal in both. Given a little, he thinks, and even those last few glimpses at a quieter time will be lost in the never ending hourglass of history. Striking up another cigarette, he greets every person to enter the door next to him, bringing the lyrics from a newly discovered song to his lips, The Ballad of Love and Hate. He writes in the third person, keeping the thoughts he has confined to an amorphous entity that can represent anyone who reads and compares to their own lives. Strangers walk to and fro in the streets, busy going to work or play. He sees them and wonders, as always, where are they going? What is their story? Would they share it? He guesses not. People no longer share their stories with strangers anymore. A couple with a dog sits two tables away. With an indulgent smile, he looks towards them and is met with a look of questioning... tinged with a look of annoyance. This still baffles him. He always finds himself wondering why people became so stand-offish. No longer a country united, we have become a country divided at the most basic of levels. It seems like it is only yesterday this country changed, but its been this way for as long as he can remember. The thought of how far we drifted apart severs the smile from his lips, which lasted only a brief moment in comparison to the saddened state we have become.
At a whistle that sounds like a bottle rocket, his mind snaps back to the main crux of his life. A heart and mind divided, he thinks about the two women who hold his heart for ransom. A song by an artist he doesn't know fills his mind, shoving the sounds of traffic away. He kinda loves two girls, but kinda lost them both. A good song, he thinks, as he jealously wishes he could write as well. He thinks to the songs he knows and wishes he had a fraction of the musical inclination that the various artists and instrument players have. His musical ability lies in designing flowing thought; the music of the mind. His words inspire emotion and thought, sparking the imagination, and not always in a good way. He desires that the world could look through his eyes; see what he sees, but the only way he knows how to tell the world is through the words he lays down. Many have told him to publish, to speak, to teach, but he is content that he will get his thoughts out, albeit to a smaller audience. He knows that his writings meaning is lost on many and wants to scream sometimes when it is misinterpreted, but holds to the rule that he writes for one person - himself.
He strikes another light, the sounds of the world bursting forth once more. His thoughts shattering and reforming only to break apart like waves crashing on a beach. Constant texts break his isolated reverie. Not that he minds, he admits that he is a social animal. He smiles as he admits that he is a product of an environment that has made it impossible to be alone. Thinking to the rhetorical question, "If alone in the woods for the remainder of your life, could you survive?" In an age where the world has collapsed in on itself, where the far corners of the world are now so close you never have to leave the house, and where people carry cellphones as if they were tumors growing from their hips; no. He is conscious enough of the way of the world to see that in himself. Given the day and age we live in, he is not sure anyone would be able to do it no matter what they say. Again his mind drifts to another topic, then another, still locked in the third person. Texts and cigarettes keep breaking his thoughts on jagged rocks, tearing apart things he wants to concentrate on, but in the ocean of memory and thought, that is impossible.
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