My City

Ages come and go, ceaselessly without fail,

History and prophecy the lives of mankind's tales.

And lo another story starts to flow

As across the land the wind doth blow...

The wind grabs fistfuls of rain and flings it at my window, trying desperately to break it open and take over my room. It’s the same everyday, and I swear one of these days its going to get in. The cold grey of dawn is timid as it tries to maneuver around the dark clouds that cover this city. My City really, it’s the only one I’ve ever known; it belongs to me as much as it does to anyone else. I sit up half way in my bed and look over at the clock: 5:43. No use falling asleep again now. All that happens when you try to fall back to sleep when the sun is trying to wake is bring on the nightmares. And yet I know that they’re not even dreams, its just my mind and my soul realizing the same truth – that this is it, this is life. And I’m not who I wanted to be.

I lay in bed until my alarm rings to start another grey day. I remember a time when I used to love laying in bed before alarms went off. I remember I time when I used to lay with a Love in bed before alarms went off. Those were good days; I wonder what she’s up to now. Probably has a couple of kids, divorced, and miserable. And cold. Its so hard to fight the cold lately. Maybe the wind is winning the battle against my window, and everyday a little bit more of My City makes its way into my room. Or maybe my body is realizing the same conclusion that my mind and soul have been slowly coming to agreement over.

I lock up my apartment, open my umbrella, and merge my body into the steady flow of foot traffic that always seems to be so intent on walking somewhere. No one looks at each other, no one says a word. We’ve been taught for so long to look down, to keep our feet walking one step in front of the either, to just walk along the concrete river roads that cut through the concrete canyons of skyscrapers. I remember a time when I used to walk with my head up, to see the beauty in the people around me and the nobility of My City. I seem to be doing a lot of remembering today. I look down instead, and do my dutiful role of moving along.

I nod at the attendant at the parking lot where my car is parked. He doesn’t look up. I get into my car, and crack the smallest smile. Now this, this is a recipe for passion – 2 seats, Italian, Red. I start the engine, put the car in gear, and ease out of the parking lot. Again, a memory of the past creeps into mind of how I used to leave this parking lot – very sideways with lots of smoke – but today, easing it out seems best fitting to my mood. I merge my car into the steady flow of vehicle traffic that always seems to be intent on driving somewhere, and do my dutiful role of moving along.

Work is grey. Grey walls, grey floors, grey suits, grey people. I’m always happy to leave. I drive to a café a few miles uptown. Why do I come here and not to any of the hundreds of cafés that are within a block of work? Couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s because a part of me wants to drive. Or maybe I just need to escape the sickness of where I spend exactly forty hours of my week. Regardless, I like this café. Impressionist paintings hang ghostly on the walls. People sit by themselves, with only their drinks for company. Dozens of people come to this place to be alone together. No one talks. Only the clink of a spoon or rattle of china on a table. Everyone is dreaming of finding someone, but they don’t even look next to them. Look over there, they’d make a good couple if they only realized they were sitting next to someone just as interesting and haunted as they are. Dozens of people alone together, that’s all that this city can offer. I think I’ll take my drink to go today, thanks.

Everyday is the same. Days become weeks, weeks become years, years become lifetimes, lifetimes become millennia, and millennia become… but wait a second. Something is wrong here.

Something is wrong this morning. Where’s the rain? I open my eyes and am almost blinded by a single ray of light piercing through the clouds. Apparently the sun has decided to quit being timid for at least one morning. I still take my umbrella with me outside though – force of habit.

Work is still grey. So grey in fact, it makes the rain fall on even this rare sunny day. I knew it, nothing gold can last. One of my co-workers is all smiles today; he’s getting married next weekend. Good for him. Another one of my co-workers is all frowns. He was fooled by the sun’s zealousness and decided to defy My City and not bring an umbrella. I offer him a ride home – he’s a good guy, and you could even call us friends. It’ll be good to break the routine anyways.

It’s raining pretty good now as we make our way through the city. Its dark too; power must be out. We drive in silence; the car is making all sorts of sounds that usually make me want to drive fast, to feel alive, to move faster than the rain, to escape the clutches of this city. But I do my part and just move along. The darkness completely surrounds us now. The only lights are coming from my headlights and that streetlamp up ahead. Streetlamp? Odd, there’s no power on this block, but that streetlamp up ahead keeps getting closer and yes, it is lit. It illuminates a bus stop, and there sitting in the cold and pouring rain is a pair of people; an old lady and the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life.

First the old lady. She’s old. But not in that creepy way old ladies can be old. She’s the type of grandmother who’d warm up an entire house with the smell of chocolate chip cookies early in the morning. She’s the type who always has a gleam of a lifetime’s experience in her eye, and yet gives you the smile to let you know that everything you say to her is on hundred percent completely new to her. She is a mother, a teacher, a fighter, and a lover. I can only hope that I can find a woman that will grow old to be her. The fact that she doesn’t have an umbrella means that the coldness of My City hasn’t broken her down; she was fooled by the sun’s valiant attempt this morning to fight the grey.

Now I just want to set this straight for a second for you. I’m not the type to fall in love quickly or easily. But you have to understand that when I say that the young woman is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, I mean it. I’d venture to say that she’s the most beautiful woman I’ll ever see. I’ve talked ad nauseam to anyone who’ll listen about my analysis of the attractiveness of women (it involves all sorts of complicated metaphors and triangles – a topic for another story) but again, understand when I say that this woman is beautiful on a completely different level. Even from half a block away in the pouring rain illuminated only by a streetlight and my headlights, she steals my heart. She’s not even looking in my direction but the whole world disappears around her. She’s not looking down, she’s not doing her part and moving along. She’s talking to the old lady next to her, and most importantly, she also believed in the sun’s promise this morning that she wouldn’t need an umbrella. I have a decision to make.

My co-worker asks why were stopping. I pause a second as I figure out what I’m doing. OK. 2 seater car. Co-worker. Sweet old lady. Beauty incarnate. One umbrella. I open my door and tell my co-worker to get in the driver seat. I step out into the pouring rain, pull the umbrella that I knew would come in handy today from behind the driver’s seat, open it, and walk over to the bus stop. I try not to look at the younger of the two women; I’m going to need the full capacities of my brain and be able to speak for at least a few seconds. I offer the old lady a ride with my co-worker in my car, tell him I’ll pick up the car the next morning, and sit down to share my umbrella with this smiling ray of light under a single streetlight.

We watch as my car speeds off into the night, leaving us with just sound of the rain on my single umbrella. I sneak a look over at this woman sitting next to me. She has a nervous smile on her face as she pulls a strand of hair away from her face. She thanks me for the umbrella and waiting with her this night. She says more, but I really can’t recall anything she said. All I can remember is the way she spoke, how her eyes were always smiling, how she would laugh at the things I’d say, how she’d make me think in ways I’ve never thought before.

The bus arrives. We let it go by. We keep talking. Her name is Alex. I like guy’s names on girls. She’s lived in this city all her life, and yet, she’s completely different from everyone in the city. She doesn’t look down, she walks with a bounce in her step, and smiles at people on the street. And talking to her makes you want to do the same. Minutes fly by as quickly as the busses and the hours, and I haven’t felt this alive in a very long time. I talk about art and architecture, about the infinite lives of everyday people, about cooking, about lying in bed awake before the alarm goes off to start another grey day. We laugh about how weird it is to sleep facing any way but west, and how strange music videos are at two in the morning. She tells me how watching the weather channel helps her sleep at night, and how she’s going to school but doesn’t know understand why people have to pay to learn.

And just like that, before I’m ready for it, she’s saying that she really must be on her way soon, but that she’d love to see me again and that I really should get her number. I fumble in pockets for a scrap of paper, write down her number, hold the door open for her bus uptown, and she is gone. I sit for a while longer with a smile that slowly grows from a twitch to a grin to a beam. I stand up, start walking home, and look up at the night sky. I close my umbrella and let the rain fall on my face. My City really is quite beautiful if you take the time to look at it.

The rain is mocking me this morning. It is reminding me how stupid it is to run home twelve blocks in the rain when you have the most valuable thing in the world - ink on paper - in your pocket and want any hopes of recovering it. I keep trying to make out her markings on the still soggy piece of paper from yesterday’s dream, but it’s a lost cause. I swear the wind is going to break through that window any day now. And honestly, I could care less.

I make my way to my co-worker’s apartment. As we’re driving to work he asks me how it went. The rain mocks me in my car louder than it did in my apartment. He’s nothing but supportive, but it doesn’t ease the pain.

Work is as grey as ever. I Google her name. Apparently it only works right if you know a last name.

Everyday is the same now. I leave the greyness of work with a small glimmer of hope that I might see her again. I drive past the bus stop where I saw her last, and she’s never there. Everyday I retrace my steps, and everyday is the same. That glimmer of hope gets smaller and smaller everyday.

My City is a dangerous place. It’s a living thing, consuming lives as in order to survive. Its not evil, its just what it does. It does plenty of good, its just dangerous. Never forget that.

The glimmer of hope is gone. Just as rare as a morning with sunlight, so was that fateful day a rare moment – never to be recreated. Today I go to my grey work with an equally grey mood. You know what I haven’t done in a while? I haven’t gone to go be alone together with the people at my café. It’s been so long since I’ve been there. I drive uptown, park, and reach for the door to the café. But it’s already opening.

Alex says that she thought I’d call before I came by, but to come on in anyways. I stand there staring at her outlined in the frame of the door to my café. I can’t move for what seems like hours. She takes my hand with that beautiful smile of hers and draws me inside and upstairs to the studios that are rented out above the café. She tells me that she was worried that I’d forgotten about her or thought she was a weirdo for talking to a complete stranger in the rain for hours on end. We walk into her room and she spins around with a flourish, saying that this was all hers - it’s not much, but it works. She tells me that she was just on her way out, but that we really should get a drink downstairs together sometime. The whole time I don’t think I said two words. I just watched her leave out the front door of the café, turned and looked up the stairs leading up to her room, and looked around again at all the people sitting in front of their drinks, looking down. Is this for real?

It’s most definitely real. The next weeks are the most amazing times of my life. My City really is beautiful, you just have to open your eyes, or have your eyes opened for you. That same café where I had drunk thousands of times before - alone together - with all those lonely people becomes a new painting on a new canvas. Everyday my grey work day ends with this single bolt of sunlight. Her stories become mine, mine hers, and together our laughter rises above the walls of the city.

The rain is falling outside my window, and I’m up before my alarm goes off. Alex is still sleeping by my side. I can feel her heart beating, her chest rise and fall as she breathes, her eyes twitching as she dreams her dreams of beauty. And yet, I still don’t dare fall back asleep. Though everything seems to be right in this world, my mind and soul still seem to be coming to their own conclusions; I still fear the nightmares that haunt between the hours of dawn and daylight. A line from a song comes to mind,

“…I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch,

But love is not a victory march,

It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah…”

Strange that in My City thoughts of love are synonymous with cold and broken. Try as I might to shake these doubts, they just keep on building. Who do I think I am? Who am I to think that I could be so lucky as to even feint at happiness? Who am I to bring down the life of this beautiful woman lying next to me? I’ve loved before, and look at how that turned out. Maybe there’s a reason why people walk with their heads down in My City. I told you, My City is a living, breathing thing. It consumes people’s lives to keep itself running. And it was about to consume me.

Alex noticed something was wrong with me in the weeks that followed. The sunlight that burst through my window so long ago had faded from my life – all that’s left is the cold and rain that keeps on coming every single day. Alex is her normal beautiful smiling self, but there’s a sadness behind her eyes now. I’m bringing her down; I’m consuming her love and life just like My City consumes me. Where once we’d talk and laugh about anything and everything, I’m now cynical and short. Drinks at the café are more in silence now; we’ve become alone together. I have to do something quick.

But not for me. For her. Its not fair for her. She doesn’t deserve this life I’m giving her. My mind and soul have already made their decision that this really is life, and I’m not who I want to be. She needs better. On my way home from the greyness of work I stop by an old friend’s place. I haven’t seen her in years; she was in school, I was working. There was no love back then. There was hardly a connection. And there wasn’t tonight either. She needed warmth and escape from the coldness My City presses on you; I needed an excuse.

I don’t know which is louder – rain falling from the sky or tears falling from eyes. I try to play my part and act like she had it coming. I try to make her hate me. I think I almost convinced her. She leaves my apartment with tears streaming down her face, but the light of love in her eyes isn’t quite gone. She knows what I did. Knows me too well she does. And she knows I won’t change, even though I am the world to her. I used to think that I was the noble one for loving something enough to let it go; but she’s doing the exact same thing. And doing it a hundred times better.

The crash of broken glass awakens me. The wind is howling into my room, and rain is soaking the carpet beneath my shattered window. I leap out of bed and look for something to stop the wind, cursing My City for finally letting the wind break into my room. Work is grey. The café is familiar. Alex doesn’t live upstairs anymore, I haven’t seen her in years. I doubt I’ll ever see her again. I sit down with my head over my drink, basking in the togetherness of being alone with the other patrons. I finish my drink, walk out the door, tighten my coat against the howling rain. The lights around me go dark; there must be a power outage. For a second I see a single streetlamp lit up on a dark block, illuminating a bus stop, but it too winks out after a few minutes. Nothing gold can stay. I walk home alone, and the whole time a voice whispers to me that it’s finally won; the voice of the wind.

...And so the wind doth blow across the land,

Taking with it the grains of Time's sand.

Another tale closes its pages

Until opened again by history's sages