Late at night, I stand like a shadow down in the center of New Chicago avenue. The only sign of life is the lit embers of the cigarette pressed between my lips. I shroud myself in my hooded sweat jacket as I tend to do at such times. I'm staring up at the sky, the street lamp posted alongside the road becomes a spotlight. Making me out to be less of a ghost than I originally wish to be. It's an intresting motion, to be as a ghost while the world passes you by, but apparently it's been an agenda of mine for as long as I can remember. I always cherished the idea of being able to step out of life and look upon it from the outside. To understand the chaos that commences on a daily basis has always been something of an obsession of mine.
And it's here I stand, in the cold night, alone. Just thinking. At this point, i'm not too far from my apartment. So it is not as though I am really lost, and yet I cannot help but feel that i'm terribly far away from where I should be ... or perhaps, where I want to be. I feel something that pulls at something deep within me. I can't help but feel burdened by some kind of ignorant mistake that I unknowingly made. It's frusturating at times to not have any understanding on some of the most random things, and yet. I know it all to be some kind of consistent thing that just continues to commence. I lower my head and stare at the street. I become lost in wonder, wondering how many different souls crossed over this very same part in which i'm standing and never took the time to think how many others pass this very same spot.
Nobody thinks about that kind of thing.
I can't help but feel compelled to be obsessed with this notion that something I have done tonight has prompted a series of events. Some kind of subtle decision I made has upon it a significant gravity in which many other things come to pass. I've always believed in fate. I always belived so strongly in it. At the same time though, I also foolishly believe that my fate truly lies in the hands of someone else. This is not a notion that i'm even remotely happy with acknowledging, let alone admitting. And yet, it is one of the things that I can't help but feel is to be some kind of truth. I'm not in competele control of my fate, just enough to make it by.
I am indeed a fatalist. It is by far the number one reason why any relationship i've ever had has been unsuccessful. My mother always used to tell me when I was growing up that I am so hopelessly lost in my own little world. My conception of reality is obscured, and with all of my transgressions and perspectives, someone one day will come into my life and blow my world apart. Every time I thought it has happened, I was completely and utterly wrong. Even when I got married, I thought that this would be the instance, only to be wrong yet again. Now that all these years have passed, I cannot help but feel that her words ringed some form of truth to them. At the sametime, I become repulsed by the idea that I would ever need the intervention of another would somehow enhance my wisdom and strength. At the sametime, however, that thought still knocks inside of my head, forcing me to not forget, that I am, in fact not in complete control of my destiny.
That is why I stand out in the center of New Chicago avenue in the dead of night. Smoking a cigarette and becoming lost in thought.
Impulses are a funny thing, they almost make you move and force you to watch yourself do whatever it is that you do. But in my case, I can't help but feel that my impulse has put me in a maze.
Because even though I know exactly where I am, I can't help but feel so very lost.
It's always such a consistent thing, too.
With a shruge and a shake of the head, I begin to laugh.
I almost understand what the man was saying in the song "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon ...
Or, maybe I really have no idea at all...
But one thing is for sure ...
New Chicago avenue will always be here for me to contempate upon ...
