Like Molded Clay

-Some people make you think. You watch them and somehow can’t wrap your mind around their existence. That they exist. It makes you consider existentialism and philosophical solipsism. Are they really carnal manifestations? I was walking home the other day and as I passed an alley I heard a soft pounding against a hard surface and I couldn’t keep my self from looking. As I turned I was able to see a man in his twenties pressing himself into a woman, somewhere around the same age, their lips wrapped around the other’s. As I watched, I started to wonder if there was any awareness of the unprivate situation. Just then his hand reached down to where her skirt ended, at which point I had to reason his hand would disappear from view, but to my amazement, not only did it remain present but it uncovered her white flesh, that lay underneath, exposing the lining of her mesh panties. I was torn as to whether I should make my way or remain and observe just how far this display would take itself. I stood there, unaware of the self and only conscious of the alley and the stage it became. As he pressed deeper into her and the moaning commenced, without knowing it, I began moving again and quickly found myself at my doorstep. Only the thought of these people in my mind.
I sat down. As I sat, the smoke poured out of me, like a cloud trying to erase what I had just seen, though it was no longer present. It’s funny how life feels so surreal at moments and so faded at others. I’ve had other moments like that. When I think back, it’s hard to distinguish which actually occurred and which existed only in the confines of my dreams. Then I start to wonder if anything ever really occurred. There was this one time I had this dream, in which I heard the shattering of glass. When I woke up, the black vase, the only one that remained in my small apartment was gone. There was an eerie feeling as I walked through the hall that I had been there in some half-conscious state and that the vase’s absence was indeed somehow my fault. I attributed the sound of shattering to the vase’s disappearance and assumed, somewhere, my experience and my dream had merged. It wasn’t ‘til weeks later that the vase was left on my doorstep, with dead roses in it, a note from my ex-girlfriend, filled with expletives and unkindness. So I’ve assumed since then that the shattering was in fact a dream and not a shared moment between body and psyche. Still, when I think back to this, I remember the sensation of shattering and how those days, every time I poured myself a drink, I felt like tossing it across the street and letting it shatter.
Even now, as I think back to that alley, it has this oneiric sensation, a manifestation picked from my dreams. I’d run back there, to verify its reality, but I know that it would no longer be the stage that it was. So I sit here instead and pour myself a drink, shakily as the image still plays in my mind, the shattering. It’s funny how these things remain. I never tossed my drink across the street, but I see the image so clearly as if I had, and yet I don’t remember it ever being a dream.