:: The great escapism ::

Sunday, May 16, 2004

The alley outside my window allows a restrictive view. Save for a small gap, not easily visible given the current seating arrangement of the living room, it is an expanse dominated entirely by the rear of a single apartment building. There are perhaps 35 windows thereof within sight opposite the dividing alley, usually revealing very little beyond an incandescent glow behind drawn shades or the common, slightly undernourished houseplant. Very rarely is there movement of any sort, so when the bland patchwork springs to life, so too does my peripheral vision.

Today was supernaturally beautiful, the kind of weekend day on which being able-bodied and failing to go outdoors at least once serves ipso facto as proof of clinical depression and/or agoraphobia. The bark of my melancholic haze being far worse than its bite, I managed to venture out for several hours, but exhausted my tolerance for ambling about purposelessly amongst the throngs and teeming masses of hypoapathetic human beings cursed with the misfortune of not possessing my divine ambivalence. I returned to my apartment, rued my boring state of affairs, and began to decompress* on my couch.

The dormant apartment building loafing in the fringe of my vision stirred. I glanced over to see a head pop out from window #11 (numbered sequentially from left to right, top to bottom beginning with the upper-left-most whole window in view of the right-most couch's seat). Soon after, a whole female body emerged onto the adjacent steel platform of the fire-escape, then three more. The four women were, to a "t", gorgeous in a free-spirited, late-20's way, archetypes of the paradoxical Alphabet City style consensus blending art-humble (though never shabby) DIYness and fashionista regalia. Their body language conceded hesitant excitement and, as the four heads craned upwards, they began a timid ascent to the roof up a structure built for panicked descent, giggling nervously as people do in the midst of minor amoralisms. They had apparently hacked the stairs and ladders, repurposing them for leisure like millions before.

Upon reaching their destination, a tar-laden city roof, they leaned over the edge to fully admire the extent of their conquest, giddy smiles all around. The grins had not yet faded when twenty minutes later they retraced their earlier steps and returned through their window of origin, the last conquistadora shutting it behind her.

I just sat and stared, jealous at how they could escape for a moment the progressive extinction of serendipity plaguing me at every turn. The nerve of them, being so tauntingly spontaneous, like that fire-escape was a loophole exempting them from adulthood and all its known quantities - a "get out of jaded, free" card.

Then I came to my senses and realized how inane it was of them to get so worked up about climbing their own stupid fire-escape. That's when it came to me: a plan to prey upon this facet of human weakness for my own monetary gain. I would build an amusement park of venial perceived transgressions.

Come! View with mild discomfort the hall of jaywalking! Experience the almost nonexistent rush of letting a potential business vendor buy you dinner without ever intending to purchase goods or services! Satisfy your appetite, but not entirely your conscience, in Free Sample Land! Feel slightly better than indifferent as you fail to hold elevator doors, or enjoy the ambiguous thrill of delinquent parking ticket payment! Put "sarcastic" quotation marks around words you're using sincerely!

*normally, but not in this case, a euphemism for "drink".

Posted by morland @ 07:25 PM

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