Imagine the possibility for a life better spent dreaming,
taking double doses of Dramamine under cellar doors. Imagine the motion
sickness from the slow sway of the top story of a Chicago high rise. The higher
the better, they say, stoned out of their sensibilities. I imagine how Seattle
would have treated me. I would be entering my junior summer with a headlong
force and fury. The mental collapse of giant entrepreneurs in a pressed suit and
a scraggly beard… The city would have felt fine, although foundations cracking.
I would have learned and loved with a greater ferocity than here, Los Angeles.
I believe my eyes would have enjoyed Seattle much better. I love walking in the
rain. It is not as acidic. Born in a different era, much happier then.
Junior summer. I would be getting great grades for excellent
attendance and an impressive portfolio. Colors and words entangled in purple
and gold and poetry-prose. Futile remarks protesting the passage of time in
slow decay. We felt the invincible nature under city lights. Something
familiar. A kindred spirit beneath the walls of cobblestone. The walls covered
in paint and a history of passion. The Los Angeles indifference… the amount of
people fucking and fighting without a care given to your existence as another
human being on this earth… that sense of jaded remorse, or more so, resignation
and acceptance of sub-human empathy in those closed black hearts of spiteful
indifference… I imagine Seattle with a less cut-throat attitude toward artistic
minds. Less blind influence. I put this northwestern beautiful city in a high
place in my mind. I love it. I’ve never lived there but I feel I would be
content with the overpopulation in a different culture. Los Angeles has a
culture of crime and dissonance. Homeless people vomiting up meals you give
them in the streets. Seattle has sadder, more resigned homelessness, in the
cold air and the cold earth.
Is the sun really worth all of this pain in my soul?
