I wish it worked out like the simple, half-hearted advice given to us by a stressed-out, bumbling blonde student teacher in her mid-20s—one with a savior complex rivaled only by the acidic, buzzing mob of Berkeley hippie activists. They dumbed down the world, positioning themselves as omniscient beings upon whom truth relied on. Those taller and older, having constructed their own authority, crafted the narrative that they had it all together—that they truly knew everything about life. In a way they did, but they held it so closely by their chest with such little consequence that the fact we are deprived of such petty comforts, now that I think about it that might as well have been malicious. A deliberate conspiracy, of people who seek to subject and discipline our body to the subservience that they command for , to make us twitch at the slight move of the hand towards our body or shatter us into cramped closet cabinets where we force out stuffy tears, with a raise in tone and pitch, the method of ancestral domination. Generations upon generations of children slapped, coerced, and manipulated into a hammered out body of grotesque frankestein-esque appendages sowed onto our ligaments. A bog of molten plastic and buckets of cheap Chinese commodities as the essence of their souls is what I would say. I chuckle, as my Timberland weathered leather boots clanked along on the feeding trough called Market St. I have no drive. No reason to work, really. The world seemed as if on the precipice of an epiphany, it no longer had the will to live. Market St. was the perfect encapsulation of hell on earth as the scoliosis-laden streets eked out blue on the foundations of barely motor cadavers that stole tic-tacs in search of sustenance. Then there were the smoke shops with saturated sepia yellow lights, advertising the usuals packs alongside San Francisco tinged essentials like Alibaba chilly cranberry vapes. The market competition of the puffer jackets who donned ripped Levi’s jeans, a cotton ski mask, and dominated the chemistry of the addled who cackled until their angled spines gave up. Artisan whippets, hidden at the ends of the Union Square Farmers Market, have certainly become a craze but I found it personally disgusting, in many ways to lose control of my body is a seizure of it, though many wouldn’t seek to understand these things in such a verbose and condescending way. Yet it’s just something that comes to mind when walking through the subterranean pathways of San Francisco which are lit up only by the shadows of neon lights blurred through the mist of seasonal rain. My head was in a rush, yet it seemed like rushing the rest of my body further would only get me half way to achieving something that can be in anyway be called productive, if not this then at least I can talk to them at the end of the day. My brow sweats and it became a frequent tic to constantly wipe it off in the middle of the walk past the yellow of McDonald blazing onto street view of the crosswalk and into my cornea. As I wiped at my brow it felt as if others could see this. This pattern and repetition, liquid trickles and it seems as if in sync my hand develops a courage in independence. A seemingly American independence, a presence in absence that sought to subvert my processes and every day it seemed to get worse. Alongside the variety of mental deformities and conformities, it seemed to me as if my physical constitution will be given a go at as well. White is the purity of paranoia. I let the river flow. I really needed my coffee. Navy blue melded onto red, purple gives way to pink which trickles onto banana yellow, blooming into a tobacco vanilla blaze until eventually vibrating to a serene vibrant mermaid green, and my beautiful queen who reigned over the coffee market sat amongst Amazon, Coke, and Eucharist within the heavens of a $2.99 ecstasy and so I entered. I wish I had the ability to lie in the reverie of such confidence to give others definitive advice on how to pursue their goals. I say I would be the last person to have the motivation to do so, yet I am ever so tempted to seize the opportunity when it presents itself, the richness and wealth spilling onto me like Texas liquid gold. But I am risk-averse, so perhaps not. Let me drown in it. This isn’t to say I am scared of taking advantage of others or that I have some moral predilection that forces me to be on my best behavior around simpler folk around these here parts. Perhaps I wished I did do that more often, take charge and control to set a narrative on someone about their own lives, about the facts that inform to them what is good or bad. The effects of that in terms of how it benefits me are certainly plentiful, but as opportunity teases me with the pleasure of infidelity, death and distortion seem to touch at my perceptive capacity. Colors twitch and mute, blurring into this dreamy nicotine haze of Marlboro Reds, the air pulsing with a 120 BPM drum machine rhythm, the sour scent of Southern tobacco thick in my lungs—a hoarse cocktail of pleasure against the rampant decay of desire, which I chased like a hog through the mire. No. I was denied the release of my wicked ecstasy, which boils and hovers over my being, seeking to pounce on my neck to make me a piece of its ritual, a parade of tick bites. I shuddered at the thought, yet it bounced through me like clouds of mosquitoes. I wish that when I took a deep breath, holding it against my chest against the palpitating, bulging rhythm of my heart, the nervousness, the agonizing tremors, and the chains of conduct, once I breathe out, would wash away, dissolving into the mud and silt that settles at the bottom of a ravenous ravine. In blaring neon, “Digital manipulation of humanity for a better tomorrow” sputtered in waves onto my face from, with spots popping and cracking into view of my cornea. Blinking them away wouldn’t do, especially with the bulbs these dipshits landlords and Supervisors love pushing onto us, because what continues to come into mind was, was it really necessary in Chinatown? I don’t want to live as if I’m forever having to translate myself to a world that considers me incomprehensible. Use tobacco vanilla in text “their sunshine eyes blind my…” Use term alibaba vapes and artisan whippets, funny