Avril 14th

If you want things to come to you, sometimes all you gotta do is hold still. Sit down on the curb. Stretch your legs out in front of you and cross them, then uncross them - either way is fine. Light up a cigarrette. Don't even cup the flame of the pretty pink lighter you found again after so long (hidden in the lining of your favorite winter bag, of all places). Light it up and let it burn. The wind will hold still for you, just for those two and a half seconds, and then will blow the hair off your face again so you can see right. So you can see the world right.

The clouds will move and the sun will reach through just for you. There's only you in the world and no one else. You take a drag and blow out the smoke just to watch it drift and snake through the sunshine, and then you smile. Somebody halts to a surprised stop in front of you and calls your name, and even though you're answering as if your listening and asking all the appropriate questions, you're not really fully functional.

But you can't possibly be asked to pay attention to the rest while you're busy feeling the world breathe in and out around you. Cars drive by and the earth vibrates with their weight; people walk and their different-paced footsteps keep drumming within your insides until they are long gone; voices tickle your ears; the lights change; limbs and bodies brush past you and you're still there, pulsating with your very own fragment of the universe: your life. You are fragile and you know it. Not really, you don't. You do. You don't. You're not sure.

And honestly... you don't care. You're there and you are making people laugh by laughing at them and calling them stupid. You're there and you're running into exactly who you'd been dying to see - dressed in particularly pleasant outfits. You're there and you're allowed to be silent, because that in itself is the perfect sort of conversation between the two of you at that moment. You're there and you sound smart, even though you were just kidding. You're there and you're talking to a lunatic on the street, but having the first real conversation in days. You're there and you're being offered all the craziest things masked by fun-to-say names, and you care so little about the rest that you take them. You're there and... you're there.

Yes, I've been told I sound stoned more than four times today. I'm not. I'm just here... and there. Holding perfectly still.



Listening to: "Avril 14th", Aphex Twin - Marie Antoinette Soundtrack



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