'December 31st', by Rosa Marin
Earlier today, I wept.
I had my headphones on, having just finished drumming for an hour.
Something told me to listen to the title track off of Pink Floyd’s 1968 album A Saucerful of
Secrets.
Has something ever told you someone?
Syd Barrett is barely featured on this album.
The title track is 10-minutes long; the latter third reaches a religious crescendo.
I skip to this latter third.
I get up and begin to dance.
Moving slowly, I let the organ carry me.
I see myself in the mirror, remembering this is something I did as a teenager.
Except then, as is rightfully symbolic, I wouldn’t skip to the latter third—
I’d wait.
Remembering this, I cry.
I sit at the edge of the bed, noticing I still decorate my walls the way I used to.
There are less basketball posters.
They’ve been replaced with Brian Eno lyrics and pictures of Susan Sontag.
Above Sontag is Kafka.
Above Kafka is Kobe.
While crying, I realize there is a continuity of the self.
I don’t know whether this contributes to more tears or not.
Happiness isn’t achievable, and that’s okay.
What I seek is a semblance of fulfillment.
A semblance of fulfillment to distract me from the misery of it all.
Fulfillment is when you repeatedly inform yourself of a given activity’s importance so as to be
able to trick yourself into believing said activity and its subsequent results matter.
This trick is how I avoid the inevitable unspoken answer to the continuous crushing of the soul.
How adolescently dreary.
I look into the eyes of older women on Knickerbocker Avenue and, reminded of the eyes of my
mother, my stomach begins to churn, because it is filled with the inevitable unspoken answer.
The salon of choices I have built for myself is lonely,
yet I find it somewhat charming to be alone in a city of 8 million.
I can’t be the only one,
moving slowly,
allowing an organ to carry them.
There are things on their walls too.
Always have been, always will be.
As I ponder this, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, remembering how silly I look when I
cry.