bad posture

I am sitting on a red chair that I inherited from an old friend. It is a cramped little thing of delicate aesthetic that used to swivel but swivels no more. It hurts my back after I sit in it for long. But I sit in it for hours, so I guess I'm asking for it. I keep saying I should get a new one. It’s on my list. An ergonomic one with a tall back that reclines and has nice soft, thick cushion layer on top a sturdy back support. But I never do, for a variety of reasons.

I get up to stretch and go to the store across the street. As I reach the corner a young couple kisses good-bye and she smiles up at him and you can see that all her heart is in that smile and the beat of traffic seems to stop between their eyes. For a moment I'm overwhelmed and hypnotized by it. Then she begins to walk away from him still looking back and his hand lingers on her arm for a breath. They part and he looks forward into the street and she looks down at the ground, still smiling, walking ahead.

I walk into the store and there are a few men talking with one another, packed in the front while an older woman stands thinly behind in one of the aisles. The men are all wearing heavy dark coats, unfooled by the balmy day. The woman is in tight pants and a small top with a light jacket that doesn’t reach her waist. She is shy and frail and I think probably looks older than she really is. The skin on her face hangs unevenly. One of the men interrupts what he’s saying to usher me forward in line. He is not ready to purchase just yet, he is still conversing. I buy a beer and a pack of cigarettes. The man who let me forward in line is asking his friend why, if he didn’t have any weed, he is buying all that candy. The friend is muttering and the man is asking what? As I leave I nod at the man and he nods back and then I glance at the woman and she stares hollowly.

I am sitting on my chair and my friend is talking to me about the situations that surround us. I am drinking my beer and smoking a cigarette and mostly listening to him. He has this idea that the universe has a history of bad patterns, as if the veins of reality were filled with gloom. He is telling me that everything is meant to be defective. It’s never going to work out in the end. That only a very select few of us are every really happy, and the rest of us just suffer through a series of painful trials in hopes to maybe have a brief spell of enlightenment before we die. I told him he was in a bad mood and I stubbed out my cigarette, then i shifted in my seat a little because my back began to ache.