fledgling days of the vacation I am spending in Downtown (not Midtown)
Atlanta, in a cozy double in the Days Inn at the corner of Spring and
Baker Streets. What I wish I were doing at this moment, in some ways,
is "windin' [my] way down on Baker Street; light in my head and dead
on my feet." No doubt about it. I suppose a poignant example of
writing in this mode despite all this in my face would be the
countless flashes against the unwaivering fiberglass, the eyes too
preoccupied to take in the majesty of what I imagine must have been
real sunlight coming in around circling whale sharks and a playful
manta ray from anywhere except behind lenses and two-and-a-half to
three inch LCDs. Here I am. What I want is the balcony, the tingling
warm air, something cold every sip in a while, cars speeding past
stories underneath me, horns sounding, tires squealing, fenders
scraping. Sirens sirens sirens. Dim orange floating up, dissipating
as it bounces down concrete hallways well enough for giants. My
eyelids, so heavy. Fingers, so heavy. Every stroke like raising a
sledgehammer over my shoulder and pummeling some poor stake in the
ground. Mind racing, tailing Mine That Bird by a length and a half.
Why is there always something to say, I wonder? To think, imagine,
wonder, even? Maybe that's the very idea. The absence of an absence
makes it all happen, makes it precisely what it can be, all it can be,
makes this world this world as opposed to any other world, a world at
all. What a thought. Thought! The thought of it all. The music,
the itching, the heaviness, the sensation. The sensation. The
sensation.
"Not with a bang..."
