The street, 115th between Amsterdam Ave. and Morningside... and as I walked along the street, the dark, quiet evening seemed to make the buildings shrink to miniature size and I felt myself lifted above the sidewalk and looking down on it. How singular was the feeling - and how often I have felt it. Looking down on the street, I was struck by the fact that it was a stage - really, truly, a stage. I played my part on it. I walked the street, lonely, in love, recovering from love. I had a tragic role. Yet I was conscious of my role, so conscious, in fact, that I almost treasured it for its nobility. Now I am acting this tragedy. In years to come I shall walk down this street, this stage, and look at it in retrospect. It shall not then be a part of the present, but a reminder of the past to me. I shall value it and love it for what it once meant. And so walking the stage, peering at the backdrop, I was taken with awe by it! So real and so unreal did it seem. So unreal was my sorrow, viewed from above and in the future, yet how real to me in this present!
Thus musing I stopped suddenly and stared intensely at it, as if to memorize its every detail, to be fully conscious, completely sensitive to the present while it was the present, the living, the portentous, the sorrowful, the memorable present. I was actually in it! It was mine - but only now. It would not be in a day, a month, a year! Grasp it, clutch it tightly, claim it, it is your own for this short time. This is your single moment of life!
- Ginsberg 1944
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fallen rain. (: