2/2003 The paper rustled in the wind's current, blowing and twisting, somersaulting through heated air. It crinkled a little as the cars pushed by, swept up among the breeze that arose from the moving figures, woosh, until they made an even stream of color; tearing down the street as if they were one body, one continuous worm that enhanced the smell of oil in the city's sweltering furnace. But the paper continued to move, bounding into the atmosphere and tumbling to an inevitable awakening that purred and roared and puttered, grand noises that threw themselves into the wind as the battered square of paper allowed itself to fall to the ground, all ripped and flattened, and then be blown back through the sky once again. I watched this paper dive through the caves between muddy tires and yet somehow seem to emerge untouched, leaping through the air as if celebrating a repeated discovery of freedom. It was all that I watched from the car window, a window that was too hot to touch as it magnified the sun's afternoon intensity. But it was this one paper that blew around in circles, one being that fell through its own convection, freeing itself from haste and toil and unfolding with the music of tires and car horns. I didn't know what was written on this little sheet, what words of memory or advice may have been scribbled down in haste. But alas, more than just those words were shrugged away as the little paper catapulted itself through the fires of heat again and again. More than just those words had submitted to the sky as the paper twirled through the air. It danced, it danced, it danced, with more soul than I had ever known. I understood it then, and my face no longer grimaced in agony from the heat that I sat in. A greater warmth had ambushed my soul, a more powerful warmth, churning and foaming and bubbling with irrepressible joy within the walls of my own body. The world's order, infallibly throwing the cars into conformity, was hardly a match for me anymore. I had already won this war. I killed the engine, murdered it for all it was worth, watched it cough and wheeze as I pulled out my key. No longer would this vehicle form a window around my life where I could be observed and critiqued and dissected, no longer would I hang, encased, on a wall like a pinned butterfly, and so I terminated my part of the continuous worm, jumped out of its rigid lines and erupted with the dance of my own fire that swam, effortlessly, through the undying breeze.