Catatonic platonicism.

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

I've been doing night walks lately.
My levels of restlessness have shot up in recent weeks and my lack of discipline coupled with inattentiveness has led me to not finishing any and every project I start.
Picture a glutton sitting french style on a mound of half eaten eau claires with a manic look in his eyes.

Sometimes I take music with me while I mull and sometimes I don't.

I've walked down the same arc sodium saturated street a hundred times to Jesus and the mary chain and Tom waits and Lou Reed, eyes bobbing and making models out of the houses that bump by, just pieces of scenery in some elaborate off-hollywood set where the lead actress wears thick buddy holly frames and smokes parliaments.

Choose your adventure.

Tonight I had a destination and that was this little italian eatery that makes sandwiches that scatter brain cells.

It's a hole in the wall in a series of holes in the walls that I call main street, next to defunct pubs and dead craft stores and vacant theaters and one slightly booming bank.

I take a table by the window, chair facing outside so I can watch the one or two barflies pass the tacky light outside.

Ordered a corona with lime and a sandwich and another corona before the sandwich came and another to eat the sandwich with.

I was there for a while actually. Recognized one person who came through the door, but didn't get up to greet. Wasn't in a talking mood, really. Group of guys standing across the street by a car.

Finished one more drink and payed my tab and walked out the door.

I've only been to three very large sized cities in my lifetime and I've felt comfortable in all three. Chalk it up to naietivity and taking things at face value. When you live in a spot long enough, you can pick up on the nuances, the places to watch out for and the moments to keep your eye fixed on the peripheral. It's not a dangerous town, but there are weird pockets of hostility that sprout from time to time in the unlikeliest of spots.

A knife fight in a church parking lot.
A severely beaten back alley crawler.
Paintball gun drive-bys outside of a senior living complex.
A suicide off a parking lot ramp.

I can barely hear "hey motherfucker" over the opening thunks of "just like honey".

There's six of them now, drunk and confident in a tight sidewalk huddle, a mass of misplaced aggression and booze riddled testosterone. Behind me. I get another look in,  and they acknowledge with a slurred collective response while one of them breaks ahead in a rum shuffle speed walk.

And without another thought, as Jim Reid starts singing, I bolt.

And I can hear them laugh as at least four of them follow.

I do a lot of running, I think, in most encounters. It must be my face.

*Camera pans out parallel with street as man is chased through backyards. You only catch glimpses as they pass between homes. Add more orange lens flare here*

And that feeling of stale melts away as the drunks falls away, one by one, stomachs in tin stitches as I near my building.
A quick detour though another backyard and the last one is out of sight.

And so I sit, sweat soaked and excited, in a neighborhood that's becoming ever so stereotypical.

I wonder what song was playing as they were running.

[Travis]

you're a ridiculous writer. holy shit

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

Here's to not getting knifed.

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

Part of me is really afraid of scenarios like that, where there are several people who just want to beat my ass for no reason. The other part of me wants to get into a fight with a bunch of people.

I told my dad this one time, and he told me the best way to be prepared for stuff like that is to just do push ups. Also punch them in the throat cause "motherfuckers don't expect that"

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

Part of me is really afraid of scenarios like that, where there are several people who just want to beat my ass for no reason. The other part of me wants to get into a fight with a bunch of people.

I told my dad this one time, and he told me the best way to be prepared for stuff like that is to just do push ups. Also punch them in the throat cause "motherfuckers don't expect that"

I'm prepared to do anything, really. Clean fighting is dead.
But, then again, I don't really want to fight anyone, but I think I have a nice reservoir of pent up, invisible rage that could have at least taken out two of them.

Whoooooosh.

[??????]

I just intentionally make myself seem incredibly defenseless.