The Thrill Is Gone...

I used to drink in the romance of the city, fascinated by the sights and sounds, the mystique of its life-pulse. I used to want the city to want me, to incorporate me into its mythos, to graft me into its glass and concrete skin. I used to look at the city through carnival eyes and stroll through its streets on escalator shoes. Now it is the back alley stench of urine soaked bricks and ancient dog turds petrifying on the sidewalk that I smell, the endless string of bums with their endless string of hard luck stories, the ubiquitous cannon-blast of dumpsters falling open, glass bottles rolling, scattering, not quite breaking, Roman-nosed metrosexual females hiding behind bug-eyed sunglasses, every hair on their bodies carefully manicured to the precise configuration of the goddesses they worship, glum, dainty, and utterly lacking in personality. I can feel the oppressive heat of anger and selfishness trapped between the tall buildings, impersonal buildings which stand as sentinels over the swarming ants below. I can hear the manic buzzing of 10,000 voices competing for my attention, vying for my affections like a late-night prostitute. The city presents its case, all razzle dazzle and solicitous melodrama. The life-pulse of the city has become a sales pitch, a con, a cleverly constructed subterfuge designed to bankrupt me, but it is my soul that has become bankrupt. I pass by familiar buildings without even seeing them now for I am a ghost to this place and the plane that I walk on carries me beyond these dusty and forgotten passageways. Now that it is time for me to leave, I can feel the city holding on to me, threatening to suffocate me with its sweatsocks smell and its loathsome nagging, its signs and omnipresent traffic lights, its promises of hollow thrills and delivery of well-worn madness. It is time for me to go, to find that place my heart has already set out for, and where I lie, the murmur of the city will be only a distant echo in my mind...