Daily Write: Bright Lights, Big City

Lost again, turning look-alike corners in the sameness of this urban jungle, at each turn finding the same people, pavement, buildings, busses, taxis, storefronts, hot dog vendors, pigeons. I dissolve into New York, the solid physical self of me dissipating as I walk, bits of me breaking off and blending in with the steamy exhaust blowing up from the subway grates, rising up into the skyscraper canyons, and disappearing into the thinner air above street-level. My calves ache, my hamstrings begin to quiver in protest, and I can feel each individual tendon and muscle running along the arches of my feet as they cry out in a chorus, "Stop! Sit! Have you gone mad?" In a few more hours, I won't know as much about who I am anymore, or anything about where I've been today, or why I'm still walking, but I'll keep losing myself like this, fading into New York with its hugeness, its callousness, its bright harsh light, its concrete, steel and glass, its money and yellow cabs and knishes with spicy brown mustard, its bridges and stairwells, brownstones and parks, 5th Avenue and Mott Street, Tribeka and the Upper West Side. It becomes me. I become it. I am found.