To Be Everywhere, To Be Here

Picasso--Chalk on Paper Study (detail)

At night, you wish to be a god, to be everywhere at once.  It is overwhelming.  You have a drink in a dark and quiet bar on an avenue of dark, quiet bars and listen to thrilling music, clever conversation.  At home, one such place might be more than enough, but you can feel it all around you, the smart, alluring, unending energy like tom-toms in the blood.  You finish your drink and move to the street.  A beautiful woman with exotic features looks at you for a moment.  Where does one buy such a dress you wonder?  She laughs, turning away to place a hand on the shoulder of a companion.  What does it take to be part of that?  You stroll slowly with no place to go past restaurants and bars that look deep, delicious.  Here and there, laughter rolls onto the sidewalk from an open door.  A shop of beautiful pastries next to a shop of rich chocolates, everything presented as for a magazine spread, rich, intoxicating.  It goes on, on, and on.  That is here.  What about there, you wonder, thinking to hail a cab. But you can't be everywhere, so you walk into another bar for yet another drink.  You feel rich, happy, full, and lonely.

And then it is late, later than you imagined, and you make your way back to the hotel alone, deciding to go up to the roof, unwilling to turn in yet, unable.  And there you see the city spread out before you on all sides.  Across the street there is a rooftop party.  Who are these people, you wonder, thinking of a story, making conversations, scenarios.  You spot an enticing woman in a strapless dress who throws her head back to laugh, exposing a long curve of throat like the paintings you've been looking at all day by Modigliani, Matisse, Picasso. . . . You will get thin, you think, spend your money on better clothing, and suddenly you feel yourself lifting up over building tops to gaze down at all the parties and all the bars and all the beautiful people, floating with the breezes, rising and descending at will.

You would be young again, start over.  But you know that it is useless.  You see the faces of the people where you work, hear the conversations about. . . .  Your tongue begins to explore the sharp edge of a tooth where you lost part of a filling.  You will need to get that fixed when you get home.

You know you cannot stay, and looking at the people huddled together in twos and fours around you, you find your way down the stairwell, then back to your room to lie in your bed, to think until dreaming, the city not noticing, continuing on without you.