10.9.2003 [waaaay too late.]

so. heh. i lied again. i didn't go to bed.

really should. it's 1:45am. i gotta be up at 8. i'ma sleep after this post. in 15 min.

i love staying up late at night, though. i'm not a morning person at all. i like the solitude of the late nights. and i like the feel of staying up late. it's like i'm stealing time somehow. the world is asleep and i'm not. it's like i have extra time that they don't have.

which doesn't make sense, i know, because it just means i get up later and thus they have time that i don't have. but still, it feels that way.

or...

well, okay. i have time that they don't have. most the world sleeps at or before midnight. most the world doesn't know what it feels like after midnight. that silence that descends upon the world, when you can hear yourself think if you wanted to. when you can go out on your balcony and the night air is cool, wet with the ocean, and combs right to the roots of your hair. when you can breathe in and feel the city breathing with you, because while people sleep, the city never does.

the city, you know, it has a life of its own. it's hard for me to speak of this without sounding cliche or dumb. but it's true. sometimes late at night when i'm walking on the streets or just standing on my balcony, i feel like i can almost tune in to the pulse of the city itself. like maybe if i just let my attention, my consciousness...slip-slide...

...then maybe i wouldn't be just another man awake at 2am.

maybe i'd be something else. jacked in to some hidden underground tap. some vein running the unseen parts of the city carrying, somehow, all the summation of the city's components, which is infinitely greater than the whole.

it's almost like i can feel the thoughts of the people who live in the city when i'm up late at night like that. the bum and the corporate shark. the hippie and the student. not read them, no; just feel them. feel their very existence, my coinhabitants, those who share nothing with me, and everything. a world. a place to live.

it's a feel in the air. it's in the sound of cars on the pavement, the swisshhh of tires going past. it's in the beat of my heart in my ears, and the thump of my feet on the pavement. the slide of my breath in my lungs. it's very much a rhythm, slower and deeper than any heart, like a deep-water wave unfurling far beneath the surface, invisible but tangible, immeasurably large. the distance it covers - you cannot see the end from the center.

hard for me to put this into words.

hard for me to tell you how it feels when i zone like that. how it feels like suddenly i'm at once in my skin and somehow high high high up, way above the city, looking down at the streets gridded out under me, seeing the whole and the detail all at once. maybe i'm just being overdramatic and stupid now, because that's not at all what i feel. but somehow, it is.

how can i say it?

it's like i can feel the existence of the inhabitants of the city through the city itself. through the pavement under my feet which trembles like a living thing when a truck rolls past. through the trees that rustle their leaves. through the concrete of my building and the flickering of the distant lights.

it's like the city comes alive when everyone is asleep. and then, and only then, if you just...tune out a bit.

sit out under the sky and tune out.

then somehow, sometimes, you can almost feel that life moving under your skin. breathing there, softly phosphorescent in your mind's eye, like bioluminescent algae surfacing at night to feed.

i meant to write about something totally different. i meant to write about this odd urge i have recently to just get in my car and point it somewhere - north or east, maybe south - and just drive. start 10pm. drive all night, drive all day. never look back and never go back. just drive.

that's what i meant to write about. but somehow i wrote about the very opposite of that, instead. about staying where i am. it must be hard to leave even in my mind.