I am known as the outsider. Sitting here alone each day, I wonder about life beyond my own form of vapor existence. We are all vapor. Others see heaven or they see their Yoga Sutras, all for the same reason really… they do it to calm the beating of their pulse felt through their tired, feeble veins. Worn-out from running in circles that were etched in a day planner from within a taxi somewhere, with ink stains splattered across the red leather binding of that overpriced book. What’s so disheartening is that those circles, the ones that start out tired and end up at the exact same spot, they were planned out precisely and meant to be straight paths, beginning with a goal and ending with a victory. The problems begin with their goals. They are too finite. 1) Take the kids to school, check. 2) Brush up on my Business idioms, check, check. But when the day folds into the darkness of night and their goals lay out accomplished like ribbons on the living room wall, they still are not satisfied. But I am. I watch from the outside looking in on a lost nation, a universe so obsessed with the self in images and personal accounts, in recognition. I haven’t picked up a magazine in five years that didn’t display some young thing, or a weathered face made to look youthful. I can’t afford a magazine, anyway. Parents are living vicariously through their children’s compulsory piano lessons and ballet classes. A life filled from nine to five (or seven to eleven) depending on their audacity to stand up to the system. But the color of gray (that god awful prevalent pigment in their office walls) never really stirred anyone’s enthusiasm for aspiration, once they reach the top. I haven’t found a single person who understands the need to let go in order to feel whole again. The secret to life is not about developing your own rhythm but about allowing the rhythm of life to set sail under your wings. I am the one known to sit on the corner alone, a little crazy. I’m poor. And what I observed from this hunched over position is a world of “me first” a city so consumed with committing trivial indecencies as long as they can get away with it. Let it be known, you’ve seen my pockets they are shallow, but I am free. Filled with a peace that money can’t buy…for it is well with my soul. [Kristen Delaney]