A Rotten Apple

It's hard to imagine the greatest place in the world can double as the most unforgiving.  I've been walking her streets for months now, soaking in her mood and her poetry.  Yet I can't help but find myself imagining her mood, her poetry and her song are in fact her tears; I am merely soaking in those tears.

I've been glorifying my life in the city to all of my acquaintances whether it be the rugged working man's angle or the struggling comedian's angle.  Quite honestly, I'm just the subject of a burlesque story.

I live day-to-day, dollar-to-dollar no different from my compatriots of this concrete mess.  The solemn expressions drown out any gleam of hope that we wish to keep when we venture into a life here.

No, it's not the crime, terrorism, nor the expense of living.  It's simply a mass realization that our dreams are steadily floating past the pinnacle of the skyscrapers.  This city is blanketed in sadness; a statement none of us want to believe because such a belief is cancerous.

Tourists aren't the people of New York City, they are moving objects we people who live in denial walk around.  Their fantastic smiles remind us not of ourselves when we first laid eyes on the architectual grandeur, why? 

These people aren't in New York City, no.  These people are swimming through a dream in which our sorry, faceless hinds have created and maintained.  And we merely look past them like the H&M billboard we see every day on the commute in.

How easy it is release inspiration in this city and equally hard it is to unroot from her soil and harness such inspiration realistically.  Like anywhere else in the world, there is no success without sacrifice and New York is known for her expensive taste.  You'll live soulless, limbless, heartless, even without companions if you want to taste her sweet, inspiring nectar again.

And then the weekend comes for some of us.  With the flowing alcohol comes a flood of dreams in which we can drown ourselves.  I take back to the stage and live my dream Saturday on Friday's pay.

How much I love this city and how much it hates all of us, I will never truly understand.