Getting Where We're Going

Surfeit of distance and the wracked mind waiting, nipping at itself, snarling inwardly at strangers. If I had a car in this town I'd rig it up with a rear bumper horn, something to blast back at the jackasses who honk the second the light turns green. If you could gather up all the hornhonks of just one day in New York City, tie them together in a big brassy knot high above the city and honk them all at once it would shiver the skyscrapers to nothingness, as if they were made of sand, and usher in the Second Coming. Christ would descend from the sky wincing with his fingers in his ears and judge us all insane. Who'd want people like us up there yelling at each other, trashing the cloudy, angelic streets with our candywrappers and newspapers and coffeecups? Besides, we'd still be waiting for the next thing to happen in Heaven, the next violin concerto or cotton candy festival or breathtaking vista to open beneath our feet, and thinking this place isn't quite what it's cracked up to be, and why in hell does everybody want to get here? We'd still be waiting for someone else to come and make us happy, staring through whatever's in front of us, cursing the light that never seems to change.