The Curb and the Carpet.
I've been on this bench for 20 minutes, it's half past 10 at night and when I look at the streets, I feel the same way I do when watching a child play on a carpet with roads on it, and the kid runs his car carefully within the lines but it doesn't really matter because it's all flat and the only thing making the roads real for him are the differences in fabric dye color.
I feel like everyone is participating kindly and cutely and almost natively in a game we set up, we're parents playing with a kid and listening and following his arbitrary rules because we read in a book and we heard on a show and our friend who's great with kids and who worked in a daycare told us that it's good for the child's development if you join him in play, if you're right there with him on the black dyed fabric of his carpeted pavement.
I think the streetlights are so low so I don't look up and realize that the world and the city and my thoughts continue higher than my eye level, right now, it's all my eye level or below.
A biker just followed the curb and I'm surprised she didn't run over it. It's so low, the dye is barely a different color, it goes from red to kind of a purplish red.
There's a clock above the curb and I feel like it's displaying the same time even though it must have changed (it must have changed because I'm engaged in His play, the road isn't dyed, it's real, the curb doesn't JUST change color, it changes height etc..)
A taxi came and parked, or hasn't parked yet but is stationary and idling right next to me, near the other curb, the one I'm sitting on the inside of.
I trust the curb, I'm very deeply engaged in play even though I act as if I'm watching from above. I'm not. I'm on the carpet laying on my stomach at eye level with the world we've built, the kid and me.
The air starts to smell slightly like gasoline and I let it fill my mouth up to my palate but not down to my throat because that's bad for you and I already have respiratory issues.
When I hear someone walk behind me it sounds like chewing, maybe mom is having a snack in the other room?
I lift my head back up and look behind me at the cracked door, I'm still laying on my stomach. It stops smelling like gasoline, it just smells like dust. I should vacuum this kid's room more, it's bad for him to inhale dust.
The cracked door is on a corner of the room, and in the bottom of the corner I can see dust bunnies accumulate.
The crack in the door doesn't lead anywhere, through the crack it's sort of grey and blue but that might just be the aftercolor of having stared down at this rug for so long.
My back starts to hurt from being propped up on my arms to look back, so I lay down, belly up this time.
The curb is right under my left temple, I can feel its relief, its topography pressing back as I press my head down.
The ink might bleed onto the back of my head, or maybe I'll have a curb shaped imprint.
The kid wants me back at eye level with the street lamps, my back shouldn't hurt like this so I decide it isn't anymore and I turn back around. I look at the clock and I swear it hasn't moved, there's only so much immersion I can have before it starts negatively affecting the kid.
The books talk about that also, "don't give your kid schizophrenia!".
They don't say that actually you can't give someone schizophrenia, but it makes me laugh to push things to the extreme.
the kid is unimpressed
A very very broken bike rides by and it creaks and clangs against itself in such an unpleasant way, i have to focus all my attention on the still clock otherwise I'll stop being immersed in play and I'll have to open the crack in the door wider to go out of the room and to the window opposite the door to see if the clanging comes from construction outside, the same outside where mom might have bought the cookie she was eating
The kid gets impatient with me, dye, no street and clanging bike, it passed now, we're back, gasoline, still loitering, what are you waiting for?
The time doesn't pass, the guests of the hotel on another curb maybe will need a taxi. Maybe not because I can only see the top of the building, they haven't found a dye that can create depth and see through ness yet, so the guests are play too, but the kid knows the guests are play, they're more play than the road (we can't see them).
My legs start to cramp, I need to get off this bench and go home, I'll avoid the curb though, I feel like I’ll trip and fall and be eye level with the ground, that's not the street lamps, that's not play anymore I'd be too deep I'd be within depth and that's stronger than the dye.
I don't notice the gasoline anymore, a motorbike passes way too fast, but I still have just as much trust in the curb as before, I know he'll take the turn, I know the brick is real.
Walking away from the bench I hear the crunching again, I'm through the crack, maybe I'll eat a cookie.