Long story short, I made a case that the air is really heavy these days.  That it’s hard to breathe because of all that is going on and every little thing that every single person does is right in front of us.  Sometimes it can even hurt people.

But sometimes it brings them together, for better or worse.  I made an audio recording of it, with a little experimental work backing it.

Click here for the audio.  (right click, “save as” or ctrl+click, “save as” if you’d like to download)

And here is the text:

Breathing in takes far more effort than a decade ago.  I can see it in the way he walks, in the swagger of her hips.  I can see it in the silent protest and the screaming masses, both trying to reaffirm basic human rights and their identity.  It’s right there between that jean skirt and the aesthetic tragedy of the underlying three-quarter length black tights.  It’s apparent again on those new sandals, fashionista shades, and desperately-pale skin.  She intentionally sits in the shade to keep that lack of a hue.  It peaks through the trees as each person moves about and they comment on the hipness of each other’s custom-colored messenger bags.  Across the way is a man reading an essay exonerating both America and the Muslim faith; it pokes its head out from the side of his neck here, too.  It’s all too blatant in the salacious way a committed girl runs her hands through my hair, giggles, and runs away.  It’s in the strained expression of a young boy scribbling in his notebook, face down on the grass.  It’s the reasoning behind those deliberate, ridiculous, and desperate acts to put some meaning into life.  To lighten that air, let it pass through our lungs more easily.

It’s moving now, in through the doors that aren’t held open for the next person and the down the halls where people walk straight lines in groups three-abreast, refusing anything other than a righteously straight path.  It’s opening the door and not saying, “I’m sorry” to a professor as it takes its seat near the back of the room, chewing gum loudly and bumping all on its way past.  It takes a bathroom break, knocking across learning elbows and thinking knees as the instructors and professors give it foul looks on the way in and out.

It raises its hand and begins its singular comment for the hour with a reiteration of its own supposed liberality and ends it with a blatant disregard for racial tolerance, offending every Asian in the classroom.  It floats above and around all the other students’ heads and it fogs the vision of the professor for the remainder of the hour while constantly, incessantly tapping its foot, each beat throwing thoughts of anti-eastern-ism back at the skulls that tried to repel the comments in the first place.  When the bell rings, it will float out of the classroom again, beating everyone else to the doors and spreading throughout the buildings again while cell phones jump to life and iPods begin force-feeding MTV down a thousand throats at once.

It meanders along the sidewalks, floating along, bumping into the heads of a thousand twenty-somethings in a three-block radius.  It shoves a single mind traveling eastward off of a path and out of the way of four minds traveling west.  Where the four minds could have walked two by two, the singular mind is now forced to splash its way through mud left by the morning’s rain.

In apartments, while they sit and eat their hot dogs that “plump when you cook ‘em!” and ketchup from America’s oldest family, it will peter in as gamma rays, slamming into the heads of millions.  After every twelve minutes, four minutes are devoted to coloring it different shades in the pastel range and making them smile at it and want it for their own.

As they get ready for their evenings, they’ll spray it on their hair and wrap it around their neck.  They’ll even throw a few shot glasses of it down their dry throats; it will only make them drier.  They’ll talk about it and it will smile right back at them after they watch the political commentary on the Comedy Network.  Almost as if they are playing a mere game of catch, they will lob the idea of it back and forth and laugh when it drops at their feet.  For some it will be a sixteen inch Clincher softball, for others, an egg that splatters all over their feet.  Either way, they’ll get another one and wipe themselves off and go back to tossing it back and forth.

In line at the pub, they’ll stare at it across the street, thinking about how good it would taste to their half-inebriated stomachs.  They’ll shove the tip of it in their mouths and light the opposite end on fire, sucking it in and blowing it out in the form of a cloud that will permeate their clothes long after a few standard washings.

Later in the evening, they’ll smile as they stare at it in the toilet before flushing their half-digested stomach’s contents down.  They’ll pull crumpled bills from their pockets and toss them on their desk and see the color of it permeate the leaves of paper.  Some of the lucky ones will even wrap it around their or their partner’s half-erect phallus.  They’ll toss it in the trash and they’ll hardly notice it was right their next to them all day long.

But for right now, they’ll look down into their glasses.  They’ll stare across the bar at each other, each face reflecting the same look of disbelief and recognition.  They’ll all gaze right up at TV screens and watch the towers fall for the thousandth time.  Before the image can even begin to create a new emotion in them, they raise their glasses to their lips.  The collective noise of ten-hundred-thousand-million throats swallowing at the same instant will drown out the recognition that they are all breathing a far different air than a mere few years ago – where they could dismiss the atmosphere before, it now clings to their lungs, a killer feeding off of the dead.