Between Jobs

In between those magical dreams of soft feet swaying softer still in the heartbreakingly green grass of childhood and manhood and all the hoods there’s ever been, except for Soulless Adult, occur fascinations flirting with comprehension! The prostitute with his sign, wiggling mindlessly as if a blind jester, his king hiding behind excruciating grays of rain, and concrete, and mini-malls (and what’s the difference - that true, soul crushing shriek of truth that comprises any real distinction between A and B - between a mini-mall and a supermall?), bumming a cigarette from an orange drifter who can’t afford it, waiting for his turn to cross the world. Or earlier, when cruising past the local high school and all its lovelorn portrayals of flashing, heart-pang memories and heroines stacked with perky youth and fast slipping innocence, holding hands like they mean in at and gazing longingly into nothing. Compare that to grimacing, wrinkly old coot in the old blue car, hesitating for more than is socially allowed before finally taking his allotted left turn. And as he rounded the corner you invaded his life, if only for a second, and saw what it’s all about, that hateful, natural, damning bitch of inevitability. And when these short visions of existence’s restless legs and cracked knuckles came to hiatus, and you sat back in the air conditioned leather of manila trappings and gray faces in vomit yellow fluorescence you saw it more, felt the despair of invisible children and bright, burning vexations masquerading as real obstruction. And yet here you sit, tired in your underwear and searching for the Buzz. You traveled miles in a futile quest to span the Spectrum and all you accomplished was a bottle of pale and some glorious white fog. What else?