I Can Never Finish What I Sta

Here, every day is like the last.

As the sun comes stabbing out of the city skyline to wet the morning worker with his dew, a flock of sparrows distant tweets echo against the sidewalk cackling in the dim blue light of daybreak. The muddled chirping sonata is perpetual, piercing, and omnipresent - a chorus resonating from everywhere and nowhere all at once. From my fourth floor window I look to the scarce trees lining down the avenue for its source, yet see nothing but wilting leaves still on tinny branches.

Ghosts, I remember thinking. The birds in New York City must be ghosts if we can always hear them but never see them. Then suddenly the familiar melody I’d known my entire life felt pretty grim and sinister.

By seven a.m. I joined the silent march of the morning rush to make my train to work, and in fifteen minutes I stepped into the bustling streets of breezy midtown. Here the assembly line was different; here I was sifting my way past nine-to-fivers such as myself: the jeans and work boots bobbing along to toil replaced with pressed suits and the clinking struts of leather soled shoes and heels. I stood on the corner waiting a the streetlight to change, and as I glanced down Lexington Avenue a mass of people, cars, and buses crowding every nook between the towering buildings above met my gaze. They looked congested, uncomfortable, and frantic. It was Monday and everyone had the distinct impression of a sore reluctance in returning to the routine of an American work week. Every face held the residues of rest, fatigue, and playful decadence; telling the story of a thousand different weekends littered throughout the town. For a moment I worried the imprints of my own travesties were so easily read upon my cheek, but I found relief in the mass of steady eyes all glaring past me to their terminus.

My watch read 7:25 A.M. and I was half an hour early to the bank. The concept of coffee was enticing, but the reality of a coffee shop was discouraging. At this hour, or really any hour, lines were at their worst. I’d always hated lines and waiting. Living in this post-modern age where fast food has spoiled the insatiable and a letter can come from across the world in a matter of seconds as a text, I lost my patience. It had gotten so bad that if there was a line, I didn’t go. I hadn’t seen a doctor in years. A doctor’s office is a line without lines: the waiting room is the line; the stiff chairs, crying children, solemn stares of everyone else waiting is the line; the receptionist gossiping with her sister-in-law between patients becomes the line; life becomes the line. Often I wonder if this needless hurry everywhere is because of overindulgence, or simply the new standard of the times.

I think instant satisfaction is the plague of my generation. My father used to always say, “It’s always bad when it’s too good. That’s why God made flat beer, and women.”