Chapter 4

I write them down in the order in which they came, though the thoughts were scattered and incomplete in my head I managed to form some coherent reflection on paper.  I was sitting alone, and barefoot, on a red velvet chair, made by a sequoia tree from the redwood forests in California.  The only other thing in the room was a bed side table that was sitting adjacent the chair, of on which rested only a lamp, that I kept off -- allowing the room to be lit only by the light of a fireplace that housed a small fire, and my glass of Scotch, that left a ring of condensation on the timber.  The fire would, on occasion, snap startling me out of some deep thought, and it would snap -- only, it seemed, while I was lost in thought.  The walls of this room were a red brick, weathered by time and life, and they paired well with the worn dark hard wood floors that have seen their share of familiar faces.  And when my memory grew to weary to write I sat with my head in my hands watching the fire burn to nothing, then drifting away I rediscovered the deep cinematic effects of alcohol, and waiting for her, I realized there is nothing more beautiful than a face as its starts to fade from memory.  Im chewing on a cigar, unsure where it came from, refusing to light it and laughing at something that came to mind.  I picked the glass of Scotch off the table and took a sip, and letting it soak into my gums a moment before swallowing, slowly, I grimaced -- a scowl that could be mistaken for either pleasure or pain.  I left the cup hovering at my lips a moment, with my eyes closed -- cigar sitting, now, on the table -- inhaling the aroma, taking a deep breath, and another sip that distorted a memory still flickering faintly behind my pale eyes; I was mouthing, “these were the nights to remember, now they’re the nights to forget we sang from May to September and danced while the city slept;”and remembering a girl I never knew.  She was so simple, plain even, but elegant; unadorned, or affected by society -- she had a quality not shared by most, indescribable and unspoken.  She walked in confidently, walking independently through life, untouched and uninvolved; she sat across from me ready to speak -- the fire snapped and I woke up still holding an empty glass of Scotch, the rest having spilled off onto the wood floor.  Staring at the embers of a fire and still feeling the warmth on my face and bare feet, holding on to the picture of a girl, she is a real girl -- as hard as she may try not to be, but her vitality is enough for me.  I smile knowing I have never known her and content that I never will.  The alcohol has me drugged, inventive, and staring into the flames as it casts a silhouette of fate dancing on my walls, a dramatic depiction of Plato’s cave allegory unfolding before my eyes.  

I woke up laying on the floor using my hands as pillows.  An empty liquor bottle on the floor reflecting the light of the moon, half asleep and drifting slowly in and out of this dream remembering only the phrase, “These were the nights to remember, now they’re the nights to forget we sand from May to September and danced while the city slept,” I sat up not remembering last night at all.  Just now noticing the needle still stuck in my arm.  I wasn’t sure where I was.  The room was dimly lit and was rank of sex and heroin, somewhere in the dark someone was mumbling in their sleep -- not at all coherent, yet riddled with contempt.  I had, recently, begun wandering the city looking for any discernible sign of drug use, and in that way I could use without making the effort of finding my own dealer.  I made my way to the bathroom with some difficulty, after managing to step over the number of things in my way, a few near misses, and my own confusion of the layout of this apartment.  I left quickly.  It was a dark day, overcast, windy, humid, dirty -- it was a day that matched my mood well enough to sit in the park for a few hours scrapping tears like leaflets for my lack of interest.  I thought that I’d should have taken a small ziplock of coke before sneaking out of the apartment.  I stood and was nearly hit by a biker that lacked the care or compassion to consider the people walking on the sidewalk.  People show a complete distaste for sympathy, or too often even empathy, for me to feel content living in such a society.  It’s too demanding to ask of ourselves to be understanding or even complacent anymore; we tuck ourselves in at night pretending or ignoring what we choose not to see, we have devolved into an indifferent being -- I can’t even be so sure that we are even human anymore, we just tack on that detail thinking it gives us some affinity of humanity.  When in reality we have just developed an incredible talent for lying to ourselves.  

My dreams lately have been very vivid, very lucid and on the verge of terrifying and I could safely conclude the drugs are responsible; they have also been very complicated and relatively intriguing.  And as terrifying as they may have been they haven’t been so much so that I don’t, at times, look forward to them.  They are a somewhat darker shade of intensity with a cinematic flare for the dramatic, but otherwise a clear likeness of my life.  The biker, for example, would personify a contemporary image of the villain Iago, characterizing the evil of the whole of humanity, and he would have had bleach white hair, one green eye and one red, six fingers on his right hand, carry an ice pick in his heavy black--left--boot, and smile--suspiciously--to often.  He would be just another aspect of my daily routine that has been stereotyped to generalize my life as I know it, he would be followed by dark rainclouds, dying repetitively, and cryptic comments and laughter in my general direction from any one person that mattered more to me than anything else.  Basically my dreams have become a constant reminder of why I’m doing drugs at all, yet are also commandingly in response of my constant drug use.  Another loop of peer proclaimed self-destruction, though I can’t say with any real certainty that I’m on a path of defeatism -- it couldn’t possible be worse than walking for hours in a torrential snowstorm, and its a hell of a lot more fun.