Going Away Well the lights are going out. I have begun to drift around aimlessly in a lost land of cloudy perception and distilled feeling. Traces of reality no longer conflict, but become one with the dim haze floating further and further above. Creatures without origin speak to me in a naturally understood tongue; they tell me of a place both magical and true. First come beautiful shapes, then violet flakes float and surround me; my wasted breaths are few. Lost for words and lost for thought, I need not analyze this new and faultless world. So transparent is the ground beneath my feet, that no query or doubt flows through this rootless ghost. A piercing breeze gushes within the whole of myself, and then from my chest, providing red-hot life to each one of a corpse’s previously numb cells. Distant sirens begin to sound, and I rotate uncomfortably within the boundaries of my own subconscious. As I spin faster and more out-of-control, a beautiful world melts like chocolate in the palm of my hand, and bleeds between my hopelessly inept fingers. A dream spirals down the drain, leaving nothing. Beyond any rational form of bright is the light that greets my waking eyes. Familiar sounds of city-centre commotion and everyday bullshit revive these well-known feelings of despair and misery. I am sad and alone and I am sick; sick to be something, to be somewhere, to be back on vacation. The only place worth being. So, dizzy as a drunk, I stand from my lonesome corner. The others walking along the street seem to sway as they pass on by, and crowd tightly to the other side of the pavement. They all seem so intent. They all have destinations; families, and lives, and magical worlds of their own. Or do they? The stern faces and brisk walks leave doubt in my mind as to whether they even have purpose… No chance of a smile from a man with a briefcase. No chance of a dollar from a man in a Mercedes. The ladies with lipstick leave naught but their stench of fear and disgust. What is their destination? I know mine. On the bus, around the town, and onwards to where I am welcome. Where the people have purpose, have passion, and can relate to the debts I have paid. Where they see me, acknowledge me, as lights once more begin to fade.
