Peach Tree Grove

  She could feel the tightness in her gut. In her shoulders. In her hands and cramping in her legs. She raised her head to the sky. Breathe in. Send your breath flying back up. Fling it against the highest stuff. It was cold, so she could see her breath pluming, too slow to go far.  She breathed out again, slow, expecting the cloud this time. She looked down. It was steep. Almost a sheer drop. It would be absolute insanity to run down it. Suicidal.  She breathed in, rib cage trembling on the inhale, then steady on the exhale. The smooth side of a building streaming down. Sheer chrome, nothing but lights below. Every muscle in her body was taut and twitching, and it was not because she was here. She was alive. She had life? To possess. She was living? To do. To do stuff in time. To move.  She was relaxed. And every muscle in her body was twitching. It was a very steep drop.  Breathe. Quick. Up hair, over helmet.  Down.  All she could see was the roa...

      Boom-bah-ya, the girls in sparkly sleek tights with with holes out over their behinds stood on platforms in Mortimus plaza, and cigarette smoke wafted up from beneath them.      But here, here there wasn't anything but the stars. Very peaceful, very bright.      Boom-bah-ya. The women slid down slithering poles and the men glanced up at them as they walked into work.      But the stars were yellow, not white.  At least he thought they were. Not cold, but warm. And set in a velvet navy-colored universe.      Boom-bah-ya. The buildings were all chrome and shiny, and the light glinted off them and the curbs and the glass and the girls until you could only ever see one thing at a time, eyes flashing faster than the light, never able to take in more than a pinpoint's worth.     But the universe here looked less like a universe and more like the sky should, he thought. Close and encircling and love...

  Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.               -Friedrich Nietzsche      Battle not with monsters, lest you become one.       Battle not the foul goblins and demons of our world, neither the ones within nor the ones without. Step aside for them, Nietzsche, let them pass and do as they please. Watch them as they creep over the cliffs, and do not dare go near the edge, for the unknown holds naught but terror, and there is no light by which we can pierce the blackness.      I don't think so Nietzsche. What a sweet little notion this is, how delicate and fragile your soul must be, for it to be so easily overwhelmed by only the edge.  You don't seem to understand life. You don't seem to understand what a fine line it is the everyday liver walks. You must be tired, Nietzsche, always running, running, running, never sto...