Roller Coaster Riding through Life

It's still the same old me from yesterday you wind up with tomorrow.
(Kate, French Kiss)

Run run run as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm.. oh wait.

I don't know who it is that the City was trying to impress today, but I'm sure it worked. Awoke to a beautiful, sunny day of clear skies and mild temperature. The Hudson River Park a seemingly endless stream of runners; the high line packed with slow strollers and cameras. Everywhere the sun gleaming, off the cast iron bars, off the high rise windows, off the sparkling waters around the pier. And somewhere in there, me; a collapsed star slowly gathering more blackness, a ball of darkness, stoically keeping out the beauty and the brightness of the social saturday.

Some days, I stand at the precipice of the downward spiral and simply walk away. But today, I was completely unable. I walked through the City in search of a lifeline, but it was powerless to help. The fire escapes offered no consolation. The water, the random glimpses of the Empire State between buildings. To cure my solitude, I forced myself to squeeze into the Union Square Farmer's Market madness, but I was as if in a cocoon. Softly feeling ripe tomatoes and picking through unshucked corn eased my troubled soul slightly, but my mouth still tasted of cotton. When surrounded by so many thousands of people, how is it possible to feel so alone? Like all the other people melt together into one collective experience of Manhattan, and I remain, the singular black pearl of resistance, the hard shell.

Walking home down West 4th softened me a little; the stoops, the lush canopy overhead, the cobble stoned calm. So glad to return to the Village. But I crawled right back into my little room and thought, it's you and me. The City cannot save you from yourself. It probably won't even bother trying. Or, as you always do, you wouldn't let it, if it tried.