Monday, August 27, 2012

last Monday

Pretty girls on bikes, pretty girls clogging up Bergmannstr., as I pass, we grin at one another, until you see the child's seat on the back of my bike. Today the seat is empty, but you still turn your face away.

I have also lost interest in you. You are lost. I have begun to understand where I am, despite this city's size. I did not check the map once today, on my long ride to make an appointment in person -- because I am evidently too stupid to understand how to dial the office's telephone number correctly.

Also, on the way back, I derive a pleasurable sense of moral rectitude from pedantically waiting at traffic signals when no one is coming. That there are no witnesses to my strictness only increases the feeling of rectitude.

Pretty girls on bikes, why are you wearing tights in this heat?

3 comments:

  1. and a few days later, this boast of law-abiding-ness was, uh, undercut, ironically.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Perhaps an even more distressing prospect for Habara than the cessation of sexual activity, however, was the loss of the moments of shared intimacy. To lose all contact with women was, in the end, to lose that connection. What his time spent with women offered was the opportunity to be embraced by reality, on the one hand, while negating it entirely on the other." -Murakami, "Scheherazade"

    ReplyDelete