New City

In the evening I have a compelling urge to just get outside. It's like an invisible force pulls me from the dormitory of my mind. I end up in the darkened city streets of some trip-hop induced fantasy that is both surreal and real at the same time. I get caught in the thin tailored strands of my thoughts while The Boulevard glows and hovers vividly in the late hours or urban decay.

The electric hum of transformers is like a transmission from another world in the vacant hours of the night; the hour when it's so dark out that only the cats become your companions. Everything is illuminated as I ride my bike through the shady parts of downtown; rustic-hidden passages and fog on the waterfront gather like pot smoke in the attic of memory.

A tower looms overhead like a majestic equestrian steed while I ride across a grand bridge into those colonial dreams unknown; traffic roars beneath, into a valley of construction, skyscrapers and sirens. It is all madness beyond compare. I’m stuck in the exposition of Horton’s New City, a city that doesn’t know what it wants to be; no true identity. Hazard’s ghost wanders here and not at his Plaza; like Charles Foster Kane in Xanadu; this place is a tomb capsule for him and so many others.

Some nights, my favorite things to do are just wandering from place to place, going to cafes, interacting with people, but mostly observing. I might dip into a club every so often to see all the creatures in motion, maybe dance a bit; receive a kiss from a municipal beauty. I trade in conversation with night-crawlers in pilgrimage of momentary ecstasy. When I go for a ride and descend from those Abnormal Heights, I feel good.