only moments

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Friday, June 13, 2008 11:43:31 PM

biking through the city at night is an important urban experience. everything is lit from underneath like a stage and there are pulsing shadows over all of the surfaces that hold me. a perfect metropolitan heartbeat.
i am throwing myself down side by side, racing against wind and life in circles and loaded turns and dwelling in the present moments of a thousand other souls. i gaze into the dioramas of other people’s homes and friday night courtings and gentle walks along the river. i can see everything in a half an hour: the dark anonymity of an unlit block, tired and shifty drifters, the dizzy parting of a long dates, flickering currents and sprinklers awry. moaning bus stations and quiet stoplights and neon signs burning against dark churches and delis and ice cream shops. speeding police cars. one gleaming highway. limp underbellies of every scorched leaf that snubbed the sun. the grass still smells, and the street is still warm, and all of the children have gone to bed.
no twenty yards are the same. everything is hard and then soft again. light, and instantly gone.
this is familiar.
and i am taking all of these images with me so that i can understand why i am like them. i will discover myself, attentive and invisible and longing, and this will be peaceful. if only for a moment.

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