Drip, drop…
I got over the hiccups, so that's good. The life outside the hiccups is still a gray Atlanta one. It doesn't provide much for conversation or even the mind's general interest. Going to work before daylight and going home in a tired brake-gas-brake combination doesn't help either, I'd guess. But it's hard to see much more than that back and forth. If the city's glory is there, I haven't found it. If anyone knows where it's hiding, please let me know. All I see is one suburb flopping into the next, overlapping at the nondescript apartment buildings and shut-down taco restaurants. The people, they live in these suburbs supposedly, some in what's called downtown and others in what surrounds it. In between their houses, they have malls, parks and loads and loads of roads that lead whichever way you need to go.
When I take these roads and go to these places, I find myself surprised all of these other people are there too. How did they get there? Did they mean to come there or did they just end up there? It's kind of like a desert freakout: Ma-and-Pa's Rusty Neon Signs, with sand 100 miles in every direction — and yet a line of customers out the front door. Out in the stores, out on the street, I look at other folks to see if they're showing the alien feeling I've got nagging in my gut. They don't show it. Or they don't seem to show it. When I'm out there with these people, I wonder where they live and how they got to feeling so comfortable. When I'm sitting at home without these people, I wonder what they do and how they got to feeling so surrounded.
