pre and post escape - the inbetween cannot be chronicaled

Before
The problem i find to be so bothersome between the individual and the mall mostly has to do with overstimulation. A single mind can't handle it. Inundated with needs you don't want, wants you can't justify, justifications you don't have, and yet in the end you inevitably leave having nonetheless. La facultad is my ideological mall - moral pushing, agenda forcing, belief demanding, filling my mass produced shoulderbag with someone else's thoughts. I find myself and my ideas lost deep within the crowd on the second story food court, packed in, drowned out, swaying slightly with the constant movement, tossed back and fourth, bouncing off options. Some sociopathic shopper finally does it, strikes a match, lighting the curtains in Potter Barn aflame, spreading up the linens, to the sofas and therapeutic mattresses, scorching plaster and wallpaper. It ignites a series of perfumes in the neihgboring Abercrombie, the smells of burning Vans rubber soles melt into Cinabon's quickly overcooked dough. I can't find the emergency exit. Frankie says there's two general ways to go about life - attached or detached. We can stop, toss a moneda into an open guitarcase, sob for the blind, feel for the poor, let the rage of others flow through our pours, pump through out veins, spill out our fingertips, or we can catch that subte and coast. That may be the comfort i find in these red velvet seats, marking the last leg of my journey home. Stained and ripped, they serve as a checkpoint in my detachment and remind me for a moment that despite all that i choose not to be a part of, of all that i feel no commitment to, at least i know i'm on my way.

After
I unhook the worn velcro and tug at the matted curtain to watch the last four days of my escape slide by me, tumbling and trailing down the one lane highway, remains like fallen luggage of the back of a flatbed truck. The furthest parts of the horizon start to show just the slightest signs of nightfall, a tinted lavender painted with the tips of a fan brush. The trees are planted with a definate intent, of which, however, i am still not quite sure. But there they stand, filed neatly one behind the other, posed like soldiers stoic and indistinguishable. I think that if i were to stop and examine, although it would take all the examining i could muster, there's a chance I might begin to see them individually. Run my softened tired hands along their bark, feel the width of each varied trunk, smell their roots, and if i am perfectly, most certainly alone, i'd lick a section for perspective's sake. They do not let their arms extend, branches turned upwards and kept to themselves. I bet when i'm not looking, one sneaks a pinch at another's torso, or a sister tree leans its towering limbs over quickly to the right and temporarily knocks her brother off balance. I open my eyes and see the rest shaking in repressed giggles with the rushing of wind. As the doubledecker pounds past farmland, rows of tall thin bark disappear into parallel lines, popping out the other side for miles on end. Vineyards too show their dearest sympathy for my return to a semblance of reality. Leafless trimmed vines bow their heads refusing to even look my way. On the drive in, their demeanor was quite different - bellys out and bent backwards, they balanced with arms wrapped round one another, drunken and beckoning for me to come with them. You could hear their festive singing, out of tune and slightly off beat, strung together with slurred speech and the occasional clancking of glass on glass. Now they are prisoners, necks hang in shame and backs doubled over in pain. Their arms are locked perpendicular to their body, chained to a barbed wire strung behind their heads. Not one to move, no fleeting peak, bound there until the season's pardon. As i turn my head to see them slip away into the distance, i watch the flowering stems begin to show their fruit, grapes tumbling in bunches the further i move forward, and i just hope they wait for me when another vacation is so desperately needed.