Blurty for page six.
|
|||||||||
| Thursday, February 5th, 2004 |
|
||||
|
I found a rock today, a small, heavy rock, sandstone I think, sedimentary, dark gray with a band of creamy, sparkling white in the middle. I found a ball today, in the gutter, a ball slightly larger than a baseball, black, heavy, hard, with thick ridges, dusty, splotched with dried mud, smelling of sun. I found a leaf today, pink-backed, broken-spined but still beautiful, its face a deep, fleshy red, cracked in the bottom left corner near its base, black-ridged. I fell asleep lying on my back, face to the sun, my backpack under my head, reading The Hours. When I woke up I walked around some. I saw a brown guy in a red velour jumpsuit plucking rather ineptly at the strings of a guitar. I saw a black girl in low, tight jeans and a tube top, a dead-to-rights video ho, turn around and tell someone that she'd see her tomorrow. And I saw myself, puffy-faced and scowling, skulking around campus. I reminded myself that I had just fallen asleep in the sun, reading a book, and how lucky I am to have been able to have done that, to have had nowhere I had to be, to have had a full stomach and all the time for leisure I could ever possibly want. I could conjure no joy, though. There amid the bright blades of campus grass and the bike racks and the squatting buildings and the hundreds of kids who quite possibly are something like I am, I felt like a ghost, a rough sketch, a character in some stupid book. I felt anonymous and quite alone and flat and dull. Later I bought a glass bottle of Pepsi and relished carrying it around. Its heft, its solidity––it was imparted, somehow, to me. I carried it about its neck, swinging it slightly, envisioning a faceless assailant. This bottle could cause someone's skull to cave in, I thought. This bottle could be smashed against a wall and rammed down someone's throat. It would be beautiful, that savagery, and I wanted every part of it. I wanted to see the shards fly off the bottom of the bottle, falling to the ground in a sort of twinkling slow motion. I wanted the crunch of ground glass under my shoes. I wanted hot, slippery blood, a sudden gush of it, staining my hands, my wrists, my clothes, my face. I wanted a mouth into which I could with ease shove the sharp, craggy bottom of the bottle. I wanted teeth to scatter, clattering on the pavement. I wanted to feel the back of the throat resist, then give––her surprise, her anger––first an "Augh!" as the bottle went in, then a "Gghhhahhh" as it demolished her. I wanted her to belch and cough hot, bright, rapidly clotting blood all over my shirt, my jacket, my jeans. I wanted murder. What a day, huh? What a fucking day. |
||||
|
|
Blurty for page six.
|
|||||||||||