13/01/12
So he walked, roaming the sidewalks beneath the great cluster of brick and mortar, stubbing a newly lit cigarette out underfoot and looking to the sky. He saw in the fluorescent bulbs of the high streetlamps watchful eyes raining down upon him, unyielding in their brightness. All along the traversed sidewalk they followed him, like some horrendous spotlight revealing him naked to the dawn. The cars parked along the avenue now became extensions of the prison in which he walked, mechanical beasts boxing him in, pushing him up against the brick porches of dimly lit houses.
Each passing stranger confirmed his fears that there was no personal life beyond that which he created: nothing beyond the trestles of his own imagination, the fictions he subscribed to every night as he stared at the lamp on the dresser, the orange fluorescent bulb which signalled light. Light. Light in all its false glory and poisonous hope.
The sidewalk harkened him back to reality. He turned on the corner of Lambert Street, keeping at a swift pace to dull the chill. Stone structures surounded him, austere in their stature, their absurdity: to think man had lifted these blocks from the earth into something whole, something tangible to be touched and lived in, the very idea was devastating in its actuality. He felt exposed, vulnerable to the void which lay outside the confines of his own mind and the cobbled street on which he travelled blindly.
