I forget how much it costs to hop time zones immediately after daylight savings comes to an end, but it is like overspending when you've been laid off and the only remedy is shopping. I pledge to turn in early, pop some pills and lower the thermometer of the hotel room, crawl deep within the high-thread, low-wash sheets and try to imagine all the regular components of my nightly sleep (DOGS BARKING, CHILDREN JUMPING), much as a man in the desert dying of thirst (OASIS) or dying of cold (HOT, SUNNY BEACH), imagines that which he most desires so that he can go on, but the available substitutes (SIRENS WAILING, CONSTRUCTION HAMMERING) are not close enough to...okay, so they're pretty close.
But my circadian rhythms are nonetheless disturbed, and hours and hours later, I finally close at least one eye enough to count as sleep, and as soon as the other eye has closed, the alarm clock jumps from 2 AM to 6 PM, and apparently my body has adopted cicadian rhythms. But not really, because by 6:30 AM (MY TIME) I am running along the streets, a night's worth of local crime statistics at my encyclopedic mind ready. All the taxis look like police cruisers. All the construction tape looks like crime scene boundary. All the smiles look like bared teeth.
The reason they say you can never go back is because you shouldn't go back. You are the past for someone who needn't return, so every town you visit is full of kindred spirits. Every room you enter is full of people too insecure to have even attended their own 10 year reunions, so why would you not be a threat, what with your fancy jacket and brand new shoes and obnoxiously expensive digital camera?
At any moment I expect one of the homeless men to stand up and show me a rejected manuscript. I could have been a pretender.
4 comments:
The worst is when you've slept with your hand underneath your chest all night, so when you run (shirtless) by a whole precinct of policeman, they say nothing, but gape at the handprint deep in your chest, wondering at what you're running from.
Perhaps it may be worse that my only thought at the time was 'thank god they didn't yell run forrest run.'
oh, amen. but still not as bad as when you sleep with your hand underneath your ASS all night and then...
i mean, nevermind.
If the homeless guy's manuscript was any good, you could probably steal it. Then you could be a pretender for real. Authenticity counts.
I imagine the homeless have manuscripts better than mine. But if I knew it for real, I would probably be less harsh on petty crime. Hmm. A dilemma...
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