Today, as I walked down the N and R uptown platform in Union Square station, I saw a man walking in the opposite direction drinking a bottle of San Pellegrino as if it were a bottle of champagne on New Year’s Eve, and I thought to myself, man, that’s a classy person.

Do we find happiness in our banal routines, or in the breaks we take from them?

Sitting. Drawing colored lines, reflecting on 1994. Everyone, at age 14, became animals, friendlies into aliens. I remember a kid that used to be on my old soccer team now made fun of my ears and took pleasure in it, and that concept changed my world view. EVERYONE was an enemy now, except my brothers-in-crime from the beach. I withdrew from them all, I was too young, not mentally tough enough.

Once a day, I stare briefly at a cylinder container of Lysol wipes, which I carry in my bag everyday, along with an empty pack of Marlboro Menthols. Occasionally, I’ll open the cylinder, and remove the clear jar with the purple lid with a butterfly on top, and observe the green contents. Sometimes, I’ll even steal away to open it up and take a smell, and I’m back for a second, in that glorious moment just before break up, when it seems you have all the trees you’ll ever need, and life just seems perfectly aligned to the righteous path.

Drawing. Staring blankly back at colored lines.

Writing is keeping me sane, healthy, even if it’s just these minuscule paragraphs and scraps that I compose on my graphed notepads while I ride the subway home, even if its about the people I observe, or my own reflections on how my life used to be, or how I might wish it would be, or how much I long for my addictions to wrap their cords around my neck once more.  I have to pass the test of temptation.  I am not lulled into the sense of safety provided by sobriety.  I crave it, but I see and hear my friends speak in tongues only the stoned can hear.

I  smell a tea, a strawberry tea.

Nothing spells relief better than that unwrapping of a strawberry phillie, or the opening of the tube of a strawberry White Owl; to has a reason to keep the right hand thumbnail a little longer than the rest, the crack of the cigar, the gutting, the licking of the leaf.  I miss trees.

I think about going back to it every day.  Several times, at that.  It’s my reason to leave, to run, my way of escape.  It makes me not want what I love.  It holds me back.

So I stare, and I long for it.

When I start thinking about trees, I try to meditate on just what do I desire them for?  What feeling do I feel now?  Perhaps it’s just the need to be alone?

It does require about 8 hours to one’s self.

Blue mug, blue plates, blue bowl, all packed up, carefully stacked and placed in my footlocker.  Threw all my work and notes into the leftover cardboard boxes from the past two years.  I sat down on my papasan  chair one last time in this apartment, reached into my pocket, and pulled out my last twenty that I got from Shaft.  On my desk, emptiness except one dutch.  This is it, last time, right?  Time to celebrate.

Right.  Last time.

Slice it, break it, dump it, stuff it, lick it, roll it. Light. Puff.  Puff.  Drink, puff.  Cigarette, light, smoke, puff. Cough.  Drink, puff.  Stop writing, puff, stop, puff, high, bye.

I hid the the bathroom just off the slot machine floor in Bally’s, and decided to take a dump, which was like hitting the jackpot.

Give me back my cigarettes, my Marlboro Menthols, or Newports if you don’t have them, and I don’t care if they have fiberglass in the filter.  I want to be banished to the outside so I can light one with my blue Bic lighter, so I can take that first great puff, and then shuffle back and forth in bliss from the nicotine choking my bronchi and alveoli.  Give me back this heaven I paid seven dollars a pack to cause.

Give me back my Skoal, the cherry flavored plastic puck-like tub, or peppermint if you don’t have it, and I don’t care if I get a hole beneath my lip.  I want to be chained to an empty soda can, so I can dip a pinch and spit into the opening while the flood of nicotine numbs my lips and almost makes me dizzy, so that brown syrup forms and blitzes my gums.  Give me back this heaven where all the ballplayers go.

Give me back my cigars, my Don Diegos, or Partagas’s if you don’t have them, and I don’t care if my mouth rots off.  I want my being to be clouded like a barbecue pit, so I can hula hoop the rings of smoke that feature a nutty taste with leathery undertones, so I can repeat this pufferfish facial  impression that my cheeks make for the next hour or so.  Give me back this heaven that needs to be lit up by a sheet of cedar because I can’t afford to use a hundred dollar bill yet.

Let me chew my nicotine gum.

Let me repress the abuse of a decade’s worth of cigarettes, dip, and cigars.

Let me run and play basketball in order to lose my breath.

Let me chew on mint toothpicks.

Let me suck on Blow Pops and crack my tooth, impatient to get to the bubblegum center.

Let me forget how much I miss standing outside with the rest of the smokers, sharing a bond that only we know, so I can make this beer taste better.

Give me back my cigarettes, because I want a smoke.

“Plain cheese pizza.  Oh, that’s right, you’re not from New York, so you must be used to having salad and appetizers on your pizza.”

I am the king of ordinary.  As I walk through Union Square on a 65 degree day, in my wide horizontal striped golf shirt and wrinkle-free black Dockers, I cannot help but sense how plain I am, how I just blend in, and how I work it to my advantage to observe life and women’s breasts. It’s a skill, I feel, to be five years behind in fashion, in order to remain a wall flower.  No one looks in my direction here in New York, and it’s important to take comfort in the anonymity of the masses.  As I stroll with my hands in my pockets, I see maybe two thousand individuals, unique snowflakes that become a colorless mass when staked on top of one another, and I move like a free electron, joining to another person with every gaze that locks with mine.  I see the girl in big sunglasses sketching her own graphic designs, and the group of crack addicts sipping McDonald’s coffee, and the co-workers eating Whole Foods salad for lunch.

I come to the last page in my notepad, and I’ve decided to write my manifesto of ordinary so that I can look back at this point if I become unique just like the rest of them.  I remember always being so plain that all I could do to scratch my own pine box of banality was to smoke cigarettes in non-smoking areas and spit like the Staten Islander I am, and I’d have to do it in towns like Wildwood and Buffalo just to stand out, because I’d always keep my mouth shut long enough for everyone not to notice that I had an accent taught to me by pizza makers, mechanics, longshoremen, teachers, cops, and firemen who raised roofs in their spare time.  I stay silent to listen in case the guy or gal who knows the meaning of life whispers it to someone nearby on the train, at my office, in a bar, or in the park as I stroll by the benches and then the steps just below the general’s horse.  Everyone else listens to their iPods on their lunches breaks spent alone.

I’m on my way to DC, and I see crap for miles and miles.

I had no computer.  I had no TV.  I had no air conditioning in the dead of summer.  I had a CD cassette radio that I got for my 14th birthday.  I used this radio to listen to the Don and Mike Show on Thursday afternoons, and WZBZ and WGBZ, The Buzz, the local contempo-dance station trying hard to be South Jersey’s KTU.  I had no Opie and Anthony, no Ron and Fez late nights.  At night, I could tune into to 770 WABC for Yankee games, and 880 WCBS for the news in the Tri-State.  The sounds from home comforted me in times of solitude.

I scanned the USA Today I had picked up at McDonald’s and spent an hour staring at the baseball standings, seething at Boston for being in first while the Yanks sat mired in second.  I took bites out of garlic knots, and sips from a 3-liter of Coke.  Coke was all I drank except at work.  In fact, work was the only time I’d drink water, water that came out of the fire standpipe near the Giant Slide just behind Annie’s Pretzels, where we also picked up the ice to fill the yellow Igloo cooler jugs that we would scatter about the pier so as to keep our employees hydrated.

I started smoking right there in my room, instead of getting up everytime and going to the balcony to oogle big titted 19 year olds, I would dump my ashes and butts into an empty Coke bottle that I’d occasionally fill with soda to extinguish the Marlboro Menthols I was done with.  A bitter acrid smell emitted from the top as old nicotine mixed with flat cola, and I’ve known this smell for a year or two, when I had my own dorm room in Buffalo, and I would stay inside whenever I had free time, and I’d play Final Fantasy VIII, cook ramen noodles on the hot plate that I had won for 6,000 points in skee ball while I worked at South Beach Amusement Park, and I’d deposit my cigarette butts into 20 ounce Coke bottles or into Arctic Shatter Powerades.

Solitude helped when I got homesick.

I rolled off the bed, and crawled down the dark hallway. It was about 3:37 on a Sunday morning. The sounds of the bar closing up downstairs were the only other sounds to be heard, except for the thudding of my knees against the wood floor. I crawled into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the tub. I then pulled myself onto my feet and walked out to the kitchen. I opened the fridge door, took out a block of sharp cheddar cheese, and cut off a couple slices and ate them. I then took out some microwavable bacon, and threw it in the microwave. As I heated it, I ate some peanut butter ice cream. Once the bacon was done, I devoured it in one gulp, and then opened up some apple cider and washed it all down. I then prepared myself a cup of ginseng tea with licorice, and walked back to the tub. I sat on the toiler, and rolled myself a joint in the candlelit bathroom. I lit up a stick of incense, the cheapest one in the supermarket, and then stripped off my clothing and got in the tub. I took out some Mr. Bubble and poured it in, then took out my cans of Seasame Street Soap Foam. I put a bubble beard and mustache , and then a bubble afro wig. I then sat back, lit up my joint, and sipped on my tea.

Once I awakened an hour later, I got out of the tub, and wrapped myself in my blue bathrobe. I wiped my face off with my blue towel, and then reached for my blue toothbrush. I reminded myself that I had flossed earlier. I put some sparkle toothpaste on my brush, and cleaned my teeth. I then gargled with some Floraid, spit out, and then went to have a cigarette.

I put on my glow in the dark skull pajamas, and my university shirt, and hopped into bed.

I am extraordinarily nervous. This is the second day of classes. I submitted my ballot earlier in the day, and I now await for the start of my next class. I have a need and a desire to prove myself, and to attain very high grades in order to truly satisfy myself. Perhaps a source of my nervousness is how others view me, people who have encountered me in the past, who generalize my entire demeanor. Do they automatically assume that I shall fail, stumble along the way, having no knowledge that as I have progressed in my pursuit I have become better? Even with that fact, my skin does not feel thicker. My blood remains warm, but only due to equilibrium caused by being icy cold half the time, and hot blooded the remainder. Only being at these extremes do I continue to function as if to be normal. To be calm and collected simply is not my thing. If I am not panicky, nervous, and on the verge of trembling, then I am totally sedate, slothful, and immobile. Such general malaise is the culprit behind many of my past friends undoing. A motivation drills through my stomach all the time, leaving me to writhe and twist in pain if I am to sit down or recline. God knows why he placed such a cruel device within my belly, while leaving so many others empty and and unfilled. It vibrates through my entire anatomy, sometimes leading to severe headaches, nausea, and sleeplessness. It is much like some new drug advertised on television, which has the power to solve one ailment, but whose side effects make the whole thing seem unappealing. The only hunger that remains is the one which cannot be treated with food or drink.

Is this what the risk is? To jump again into the deep black waters, not knowing what might drag me down? Perhaps to not jump is the most risky behavior. I think I believe that, yet any actions considered to be a part of a normal life are what I fear the most, and I stand in the headlights knowing that I will be killed, yet my legs do not wish to move. I am totally shy, and I fear that I have social anxiety. I know I am not agoraphobic, because my love for the outdoors eases any fear that I might have of being around complete strangers. Perhaps it is a fear of judgment. Do I judge? Perhaps. I see people in their outer coverings, and might begin to assume. I hear their voices, and I am overcome by a sense of disgust, possibly because I myself know not the variety of miscellaneous drivel that they speak of. When I do find someone I wish to speak to, the need to release my entire life experience fills my brain, as if this might be the last person I speak to, and I must impart my tale to this human vessel so that they might pass it on to others. But, if I look to others as they speak and think “Who cares?”, then logically they must think the same about me. I try to secure myself in the notion that everyone is the same as myself, and then I try to break free of that notion. Perhaps the former doesn’t even exist, and I am simply playing a cruel game with myself, a masochistic form of solitaire, where even if I win, my skin is torn, my blood is drawn, and my body and spirit are worn, leaving nothing but a 1 in the W column.

I can sense the fear that the old have of the young. There is an advantage that comes from being completely naive to the world, and of being so beautiful and full of potential. I felt the loathing that the youth have of those older than themselves, and the disgust and judgment that they possess on those who have not been a sucess, for their assumption is that if you are older, then you automatically succeed. It is a falsehood of which they will find out for themselves. It is why I stuck to certain standards when seeking a woman, that they had to simply be of a certain age. Yet the allure that the youth possess at 18, mmm, such fine specimens of women that want nothing to do with me because I am older. The 18 year olds now are five years my junior. It breaks a law that I held, and that is that a female had to be alive by the time I reached kindergarten. But I doubt I will be able to break that rule, since they have their own systems of rejection in place.

There are the ages of life that seem to go on forever, while others seem to fly by. I can vividly remember 5, 10, 12, 16, 18, and 20, but can hardly recall the rest. In fact, I have forgotten most of everything under the age of 4, and at the present I am beginning to forget anything that happened before age 7, when I first became self-aware. The things that last are the pain. I was made fun of a lot when I was young, and it carried its way up till the freshman year of college. That’s when the drill made itself known. The motivation carried me through, letting me know that there was more important stuff to take care of, more than the jabs, the quips, and the insults. Yet it hurts me, to this day, and made me very mindful of the assumption that everyone abhors my existence. The quagmire becomes evident; why should I strive to contribute something to society when they want nothing of me, and have not given me anything except pain and misery?

I lit a candle in my bathroom sink, so as to have a somewhat dim illumination in the room in order to provide enough light for the task of smoking a cigarette. The neon crimson light at the end of the tobacco is not enough to let me see the filter enter my lips. I saw a thing of beauty at one moment during my break. The light, emanating from the sink, was so wonderful. Unlike a beam of sunlight that breaks a dark room, unlike the one that burned the vampires as they sat trapped in a brick vault in “Interview with The Vampire”. The light flowed slowly out of the sink. When one put a piece of dry ice in a bowl of water, the gas sublimes from the solid, bubbles up, and then goes its own way, slowly. It hangs around the cool water, and gently dissipates. It is a soft action that takes place. This is a good analogy to what was happening in my sink. The light softly bubbled up from the candle, hung around the porcelain, and then just went away, absorbed into the invisible darkness.

Is this the reason I started smoking? To, one day, reach an epiphany such as this? What about the times I smoked packs of cigarettes in a matter of hours, with my heart racing, my mouth dry, sipping on Coca cola, mumbling about the meaning of The Matrix, or the hidden meaning behind the light sabers in Star Wars? The times when I was all alone, and had nothing but a pack of Marlboros and a radio, sitting in darkness, nothing to do, and no one to turn to, slowly killing myself with carcinogens; it was all to reach some conclusion regarding a small aspect of the world around us? Do I quit now, or do I smoke again, waiting for the next idea to happen?

This is where my mind goes, and it happens with more frequency now. I have been on the verge of tears for a few months now. I cannot keep my focus. Things pop in, pop out, and I have the need to remember as much as I can.

Fear and anxiety can go hand in hand, but fear is not necessary for anxiety. In fact, I’m probably as fearless as I’ve ever been, but the simple fact that there is so much going on around me, and I can see it all happening, and cannot figure out what to look at first. The carousel makes its revolutions, it will not stop, there’s all the horses to jump onto, and I can’t pick the best opportunity in which to engage the ride. It is sure to stop soon, and I better get on, but this has to be the longest ride I’ve seen yet, and it is well past two minutes. I can’t jump on. I need to jump on. Okay, I need to jump on now. I’m gonna jump on. Right now. Okay, I’m gonna jump on. I’m gonna jump on. Now, I’m gonna jump on now.

I’ll jump on. I will jump on. Okay, I’m gonna jump on. I’m gonna jump on.

That’s the general feeling I have all the time.

See? My heart is fucking beating hard right now, and I don’t know why. I’m just always nervous.