Inhale, Exhale

It was tough even walking down the sidewalk. Usually, though a problem physically, there was really no mental issue with that habitual straining and flexing of the muscles required to move his taunt, thin body across pavements in any given direction. However, it seems like lately, that was all he could think of, at least in passing thought. "Flex and release, left and right,' he reminded himself. Ever since the car accident he had kept a strict sense of what he was doing physically. "What a luxury,' he thought "being able to move without being conscious of it."

He noticed it immediately after losing it. The effortless way in which people strode around, going to Pet Smart and Target. Going down and up moving around, throwing Frisbees, going to movies and making coffee. These quintessential moments, frozen in their seeming permanence, but fragile in their reality, were his to enjoy no longer. He was vividly aware of his impairments. Some days, he supposed, that was all that got him up the morning. Every morning it was the same thought. Crunched and scraped through the years but the spirit remained. "Simply: put one foot in front of the other you fuck up."

Today was a day that, unlike many that had proceeded it, was fairly carefree. The sidewalk was free of people. Free of judging eyes unlimited in their potential for notice.He forgave them, obviously, he was no paranoid. Still he couldn't help but have a point of view tragically given to those who can see only through the lens of someone impressed upon. He knew all too well the reflexive extra glance shot at someone who exhibited the slightest difference. Knew all too well the thoughts that are nothing short of whispers of cognizance. Recognizing life's inherent dichotomy. There is the healthy and then, the infirmed. Joining the latter was no joy.

These truths did not embitter him. Despite knowing, what he was almost certainly sure, was a perspective forged out of truth and experience he still indulged fervently in humanity. Trying to remain active though he often fought back chasms of non-interest. He did throw the occasional football and still enjoyed a constitutional on Friday afternoons. In fact, come to think of it, there was nothing that he would give up for those Friday afternoons. Everyone sitting comfortabley on the precipice of freedom. He drank heartily from that particular cup, sensing physically the abstract. In fact you could say that was his passion. As his days had wore on, he simply put more and more stock into things that weren't of critical importance to his peers. Slants and impressions. Physical manifestations of concepts and passions. More and more he saves the used coffee cups and the half eaten microwave dinners. Thinking them artifacts in a life lived, vessels through which a experience that flourished, now resides in.

It was that attitude that brought him here today. Down an alley, so stereotypical in its dankness he thought it might be from Hollywood set. He was drawn to it. A flickering street lamp hummed in the corner, a stale half fog floated the expanse of the street as the occasional can littered broke up a monatany of a blemished sidewalk. Halfway down this urban ecosystem was nothing but a simple door to a bar. There, was of course, nothing different about this door. Not blood red, or gifted with a memorable knocked, this door was only exceptional in its blandness. It looked, not unlike the rest of the alley,like it had been delivered fresh from the "Doors that belong in an alley store." So it was with an understandable lack of respect that he wrapped his hand around the mildly tarnished brass handle and gave it a half twist, powerfully, the twist of a muscle memory. Of a task off repeated.

In the midst of this bar he sat. From "left, right," he now progressed to the "up and down," of the lifting of a glass of modestly priced American beer.

She approached like all woman who want something. A demur walk, one that speaks another word with every dip and compensation for a limbs movement elsewhere. It was in the beautiful counterbalance of weight shifting that he noticed her. Alive in death. A breath of fresh air in a place where the most explosive movement had been a yawn.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello," he replied.

"What's a girl like me got to do to get a drink around a place like this?" she jested. He knew, at his core, the core that made him human, that the ball was squarely in his court.

"...Depends greatly on two things." He replied with all the mystery he could muster.

"What would those things be?" she played back.

"One, of course, is a girls aptitude for enjoying whiskey." he replied.

"Certainly a rigorous test," she said coyly.

"Second," he marched on as if to a final goal, "is without a doubt, a girls propensity for starting something she can't hope to finish."



............left and right, up and down.