The lurching of the Underground wears down my nerves from the second I sit down on the fiberglass seat until I hurry off one stop too early, opting for the rainy streets instead.  Outside, the pavement shines in rainbow colors, the artificial masterpiece of oil spills and traffic lights.  The world is full of glorious, cruel distraction.  I shiver thinly under a plastic slicker and I can smell egg rolls and sadness wafting from the smallest restaurants imaginable.  The rain offers little relief from the mathematical back-and-forth of the Underground.  It falls irritatingly in a thousand places at once, requiring an impossible amount of attention as each drop adds to the drear.  I put my hands over my ears and quicken my steps, forcing physical strain to quiet my mind.
            Rushing desperately toward the next station I submerge in that gray sea of umbrellas containing a stable, genial, respectable people only marginally aware of the pounding rain, the lights, and the car horns sounding.  They are un-agitated, un-strange.  There is something the matter with me.  I am bursting with realties that arrest me as powerfully as illnesses.  They are all, one by one, the most beautiful in the world, and yet I only have time to hate them for invading my peace.
            My own heart is a distraction.  Each throb of my heart, each step, each whirling color which passes me by is just another instant I have missed in my haste.  I am jousted like a rag doll by each one.  I want to stop and eat in every one of those tiny restaurants, appreciate the wall art, and hear stories about wherever the owners used to live. I want to stop and play my violin in that beautiful chapel and listen to the tones fan out like the rose window.  I want to feel like lemony summer but the sea of umbrellas drags me on.
            My legs are running on automatic timer to some supposedly important end, but it seems more and more likely that they’ll take off when I least expect it.  I try to imagine I’m running toward some sort of paradise, because it keeps the roiling colors in check, but I can’t pretend forever.  I don’t know if where I’m going is full of cheetahs and fascinating discoveries, or alarms, alarms, alarms.

Each tiny movement of my eyes aches and reverberates in my skull, which feels as if it is filling with rain. The pandemonium increases.  My mind is going to overflow.  The pigeons on the sidewalk skitter like leaves when I pass under awnings. In my mind, all the beautiful things I reach for are swept grotesquely into the alleys I don’t have time to admire.  Rain is slashing in front of my face.  The lights are too, too bright.