hundred-and-eight

14:24:30

I’m sleepless with wet feet drying.

Looking out over the roofscape of chipping paint, antennas, water tanks and cranes, we saw two flocks of pigeons circling. They drew a corkscrew from low to high, from dense to barely visible, from two to fused and then in a split second, they disappeared completely. Somebody had won the pigeon war and somebody else was probably smacking his forehead in the name of momentary loss.

Is it not strange to breed pigeons, to live amongst the infamous aeronaut rats of modern cities, to paint their inner wings red, to make them bead collars, to stand on roofs circling large wooden sticks, training them for hours for the mere purpose of stealing someone else’s pigeons at the risk of having one’s own stolen?

One man’s passion is another man’s bewilderment. Pigeons aside – for they are quite a beautiful quirk to our city, and their shit has yet to become a problem soliciting spiky sculptures and window sills – what bewilders me the most is that in spite of all the passions I have ever called my own, I have yet to find the one that will salvage me, and of course it will, from this certain numbness that follows me around like a stray dog that finds something in me to feed on.

And looking around, piercing as deeply as I can, I see that I’m not alone in this predicament. Have people always been this way, morally adrift, ardently astray? We do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a dabble here, a dally there, johns, jacks and marys of all trades, masters of none, masters of sidewalks, intake and launch parties. I mean really, how can I sustain a passion if I keep it strapped to the backseat while I drive from one worthless distraction to the other? I think it’s time to start placing the building blocks towards something constructive, time to empty the boxes of dusty memories, time to stretch the mind to new limits, time to work the mind and plant new seeds in it, time to carve meaning into every gesture and decision, time to start making sense to myself first before others, or just a time to do while I am still sane.

There come the pigeons again, flickering little eyelids of white, black and brown, winking to the perched single cooers who join in and split at their ease. The flock turns and then splits into two, seven beneath the long nose of the crane, seven above, so playful for a scatter of pea-sized brains. Their rhythmic motion has an allure of a campfire; I could watch them for hours, buuuut, that’s a distraction I can keep for another day, when I wake up early enough to not look up in surprise and wonder where the day has gone to.