Destination: Anywhere But Here.

There are nights when desperation comes, where words are forced and I can’t make much sense of anything. I stare blankly at the walls searching for inspiration and draw a constant imminent blank. My eyes begin losing focus and everything becomes hazy. Sleep deprivation and a healthy mixture of caffeine and alcohol will do this to you. I can’t concentrate and no matter how much I have to say nothing comes. I bang my head against the wall and moods come and go and leave me and those around me bewildered. It’s these moments in these times that I know I need to get out. I need to step out of my realm and hit the streets.
I’ve taken busses and trains everywhere, all over the city and even the country. I’ve done the Greyhound, the Megabus, the Pace bus, the CTA bus, the Amtrak, the South Shore Line, every last line on the El, and possibly even more. The busses and trains are good for me. There’s constant movement and unpredictability. It’s a way out, a chance to study human behavior and find either ugliness or beauty in it. It’s a way to forget about your problems, a time to stare out onto the city and relish in the luminescence of this man-made concrete jungle.
Some nights this city is perfect and it’s impossible not to fall in love. A girl will board the train the same time I do and even though she may never know it I dream of pulling her close and showering her with kisses and confessing my love that’s truly all in my own head, a made up on the spot kind of love like you read about in books or watch on movie screens in overpriced theatres that reek of over-consumption and stale buttered popcorn.
On a nice Spring night with the window jarred open on the bus as you’re zooming down Fullerton and staring out at the full moon whilst madness is all around waiting to creep up on you and stab you in the side with a knife and you know anything could happen at any given moment, it sure may be an uncomfortable feeling but these are the nights where I need to get out, get the blood flowing, get the brain thinking, snap out of this funk, this haze. That cool Spring nights breeze seems to snap a little life into this otherwise lifeless feeling body of mine.
There have been days and nights where I just board the train and take it as far as it will take me, hoping to find some sort of truth out there or discover the undiscovered, to find kindness in the cruel streets whose white and yellow lines tend to blur as I exit the train and stumble absently and solo through the unfamiliar neighborhoods. I’ll stop off at a bar or coffee shop and listen to conversations taking place all around me and I hear nothing but stupidity and greed oozing out of the mouths of so many people that are already dead to me, just skeletons or ghosts. These are the times where I want to burn this whole city down and torture everybody in it.
Always looking for the dramatic incident or dramatic ending when it doesn’t need to be dramatic or even memorable, just has to get my brain thinking again, have to get the oxygen shooting through my lungs, put a little hop in my step. Some days and nights I’m asked where I’m going and I have to give it some serious thought. Why am I out there? I have nowhere to go. I have nothing to do. I’m just out riding, looking for something or somebody. I haven’t quite figured out what or who I’m looking for but until I find out I’ll be riding with my eyes wide open.