I am going dazzlingly fast! I am a leaden pellet, an eagle, a hailstone – plummeting deep, free-falling into the dawning glow of morning. Graceless and without control, I plunge. I’m the beam of light trapped inside a diamond, bouncing off all possible exits a hundred times every second. I stand on the border of the Cycle, tightrope walking, stars shooting across my path towards the black hole light-years beyond. My whole will is bent on sustaining this one fragile set of scales. Leaning one centimeter towards left or right could mean the difference between deliverance and devastation.

Noir Metaphor

I drive through the city, the heat of day still lingering long after sunset. A thousand nights in this town and not a single gust of fresh wind to ease my mood… Sure as hell feels like I’ve been here for decades, but it’s not about time as in days, months or years. This town made me old at heart.

I tread on empty streets, dodging old memories, trying not to look back… No use. They are all over me. The traffic lights are fireflies from hell, telling me to stop, to park and do my last dance with them. I pay no attention.

I drive by the small apartment building where I used to live with my wife. The light is on, but I know it isn’t she who lives in there these days. We used to fight because I was so eager to leave and see the world, like some idealistic life-hungry teenager. She’d call me selfish. I’d call her paranoid. Young people.

Perhaps we were too right about each other. She wanted kids and a house with a white fence, but the American dream has always appeared to me as having something essentially wrong about it. Lately I’ve been asking myself if I ever should become a father at all. If that happens, lil’ Johnny better grow up to be unlike his old man. Which he undoubtedly will – kids are all about disappointing their parents, after all.

That Old Faustian Deal

It will all go away, Alex. Given enough time, everything goes away. Not so many chances are given after all, to avoid the drafty things that make you shiver when the light is quiet. You know, they say if you hear an hourglass whispering, that means you are dead. And what an odd thing to say. Well, well. Onto the agreement: It calls and waits and you always go. It can’t see the outlines of faces, Alex; eyes are all that matters to it, eyes are all that makes it hungry. – And it never sees me. Only you, Alex, and you are my favorite ghost. I often carve myself in thought; perhaps there is another world behind mirrors after all. One not quite so arid, and without despair that whips you round the bend. But you can go home drunk and forget all about it tonight. You can give the roulette another spin in the morning, thank you very much. You can have a drink and not remember to spike the needle in your chest. But you are profound – I’m sure no needle could reach the depths of you, Alex, as much as nothing could possibly survive that deep – neither poetry nor music, grim child, only the fluid, fleeting, the almost, the indefinable quasi void that fills your lungs when the trees are nodding. Despair, Alex. The rusty hook in your heart. The music. All that you’ve paid no heed to until it made you unworkable. Because you ARE unworkable, you know? And you have no time. What is your name? What are you selling? What have you to trade for another castaway day sailing in this sea of murky hopes?! Ah yes... Company.