(a selection from an unwritten whole)

He awoke in a strange and densely populated urban landscape, fenced on all sides by crapping animals and people who spoke only his surname. He moves among the folly. He flies by night, he speaks silent words and only to himself. He observes the ghosts, the nighttime embers burning from moving lamps, four wheel drives, and swaying hips. The shirt collars and v necks cut the night around him, mini skirts and tassel tops reveal the musculature of intent. He walks these streets; long, endless latters.

Faceless voids he passes swiftly, round wrist-watched men, trailing lonely sons. His watch...his watch stopped ticking. He wears it for reasons unknown, he thinks of it as his piece of lost time. Picking up speed, climbing sidewalk latters, the pace kept by rhythms in his mind. Passing shoulder steamboats bumbing and shoving, disturbing the pace of his rhythm, his footstep melody. These men passing, men who see directions that apparently he does not. Men who specialize in the acquisition of wealth, the profit of deceit, the collection of identical shirt collars. Men whose shoulders confuse him with their broadness, whose minds confuse him with their narrow broken compass. Directions lost to him, and for this reason, they bump, they shove, they see fortune in the nighttime.

Swing, flap, ding; a smoke shop door plays backup in his somber midnight tune. Tempted in a new burning and by recommendation of Raul the shop keep, he purchases his first cigar. At $2.50, he guesses that this purchase will yield minimal respect from Raul, but the will to burst forth into a new, albeit, thin wall of experience proves too irresistible. For this occasion, a degree of ceremony is in order. Ceremony which desires of him a unique surrounding. In a city such as this, unique becomes drowned in it's own presence. A bench will do.

To bite down on one end, as he's witnessed in films, is a choice and a sudden one. Instant impact, the wall beginning to break. He's bitten too much. The dry tobacco in his mouth, wet with spit; chewing on withered thoughts, old and forgotten, the memories he's stolen, the memories he's lost. He spits, someone, distant but still, has witnessed his ceremony, someone has stolen a glance at his great solo performance. Overcome by invisible jazz, he ignites the match. The performance continues. Bravo pour le clown! Breaths, breathing, the soul of thought, the essence of memory, the inevitable destruction of material, burning before him, he breaths as if at this moment this breath were his only chance, his last great homage to the lost, to the forgotten, and he is dizzied by the weight of this honor. He exhales.

Though the true Jazz is lost, it sizzles on in his twilight late night dizziness, spirals out from his mind and dissipates in the airwaves. Senses piqued, toes tapping, new walls broken; another new moment burns bright and goes out, the trail of smoke a signal flare to a distant self, a memory of this passing second, this pin-prick in time. Another vast inhalation, a long, slow exhale. He bows, if only to himself, and the curtains, as in all moments, close.