YD6~24 A Maze for Aetheria in the Concrete Jungle

"In this mind-bending memoir, a living consciousness named Aetheria chronicles her incredible journey. From battling dark forces that threaten her very existence to seeking justice and self-discovery, every page unfolds a captivating story unlike any other. Visit I-write4u2read.com to delve into the thrilling world of 'Vitrine of Consciousness' and witness Aetheria's extraordinary odyssey."

At first, light coaxed to awake from a deep night, the jetlag dissipated, my spirit synchronized, mind raising Monday’s task. ‘_Phone and secure a job interview!_’ I’m dawdling in bed watching the window’s upcoming sunlight, listening for the city’s buzz. Dreaming, tradesmen head to sites, mothers preparing their children for school. Civil servants in suits and pancake-briefcase communing to their desk, and the secretaries arriving at their companys’ desk. I stirred my reveries with a kick, and flung the blanket, to rise, reaching beyond the bed for my toiletry bag nestled in the suitcase. In the bathroom - HISS - the turning faucets hot and cold water. I squeeze toothpaste, brush, rinse my mouth, meditating over my enterprising day. urging the routine - WHIRR - mirroring my Philips shaver’s grip, rotate my stubble chin, jaws to my earlobes, mustache, and neck, fingertips until skin-smooth. 

Steam embraces me as I slip out of my briefs and step into the shower. Stand under a cascading water spray - HISS - Then, I step aside, lather foam from head to toes. Return under the steaming spray, my slippery palms until  squeegee hands, my skin’s dirt steamed to the core cleansed. The towel I pulled from the towel rail unfolding the fabrics to my palms, I rub my head, eyes, face. Swinging the towel over my shoulder, I grab opposing corners, to a Japanese exfoliating rub. Wipe my arm, legs through each toe, stepping clear of the shower cubicle. 

The towel flops over the towel rail, and I step into my briefs, Jeans, and socks, coordinated a casual long-sleeved collarless brown top, matching brown leather shoes. I head toward the bed. sidesaddle on the edge, stretch the gold links of my wristband, slipping on my trusty squarish wristwatch. In my corpulent procrastination, the telephone in front on the bedside table, on my watch, I’m waiting, glancing at my watch’s ivory dial, In the grip of indecision, the second hands with a silent nervous tic circles. the minute hand orbiting, I can’t drive myself from the grip of Aergia. I call onto my Warthog’s wrath, Aergia whispering. ‘_Wait, for when Chief Executive Officers’ arrive at their headquarters._’ 

I imagine the CEO breezing into the offices, greeting lingering shadowy staff figures, past his secretary at her desk. His disappearance into his office to his chair, ready to tackle the day’s construction site issues. While my wristwatch’s creeping spider legs, smooth circles past simple golden five-minute notches, to the upcoming on the hour notch. Aergia’s whispers. ‘_Allow the office to settles into the day’s routines._’ Restless stirring myself as I’m incapacitated, while fueled by the fear of missing out on a job opportunities. Until my mind sighting the end of my livelihood. At the dial of my wristwatch, the minute hands creeping the last few five-minute notches, spikes a heart pinch at the reality, setting myself an ultimatum. “Ten o’clock. . .” On the hour, I dive forward, dialing the phone number from my diary. The latent secretary answers my call. She calls out. “Jerry.” The line dies on me. A man's voice booms through the receiver. “Jerry Brecker?” 

I respond, saying. “Good morning. I’m calling in reply to your advert for an estimator.” 

Jerry Brecker’s voice revives the dead silent line. “Come and see me on Wednesday,” he booms. “My secretary will give you the details.” The line dies on me, the secretary’s voice returns. As she speaks, I note, lost in a kaleidoscope of New York. Stunned and daren’t pose a question — as elementary school teachers though me to keep quiet, and people since, given the look. ‘_Are you stupid, posing a question?_’ 

I refrain from insisting, hang up the phone, thoughtful, I rise to my feet, step toward the door, and out of the room. ‘_I’ll have to find out for myself?_’ head for the elevator door, to the elevator, emerging and cross the hotel lobby, dropping off my keys, I ask the attendant. “Where can I catch the F subway?” I pull the plate-glass doors, descend the doorstep onto the sidestreet. Swept up in a whitewater-rapids to honking horn, screeching tires, along the buzzing one-way traffic. On a trial run, I’m mesmerized by the upcoming Lipstick skyscraper, walk past, scouting out my route to Lexington Avenue. I descend underground to the ‘F’ train platform, boarding the train bound for Brooklyn.

Wednesday morning, my willpower harness my Gemini’s genie’s free as the wind will. I’m prepared to rein in the stormy wild horses, for a peaceful ride, factoring in extra time. Anticipating destiny’s mischievous hurdles en route. Captivating City Bank’s suspended silver corner jutting the tower's into the void, to descend the stairway pursuing the orange ‘F’ disc down to the subway platform. The train pulls, to stand before a trail of windows clearing the cabin’s seated passengers. I board, we pull out of the station, I remain standing on alert at the rhythm of riding outbound. 

After several stops, I alight, rise from the underground to opening the skies, greeted by gloomy drawn down architectural boxes to edge the sidewalk. walking on the opposite sidewalk to a sooty brownstone sculptured block, the porch out of another age and long sealed entrance. I turn off the main street, drawn into a somber side street. The cubs leading away with white, red and blue striped United States Postal Service jeeps, showing a side entrance at imagining people sorting mail and packages behind the brownstone building, which opposes a run of warehouses. curbs of private cars train into the blur of the distancing street. 

I blocked from mind seeing a building’s dark, grim ground floor behind a band of the windows. In my strides, across the screened rusty mesh shield small panes. At the end, I pause by a fresh paint door to press the calling button. When a tinny voice answers the intercom, I announce myself, “I’m here for Jerry Brecker” At the - BUZZ - I press the door clearing a yellowed fluorescent lit heavenly flight of stairs. I pawed the treads to the stairwell’s squeezing walls. level eyes to up to a claustrophobic landing with an offside door. Crossing the last riser, my right-hand swings, dragging my body pivot left, I grab the door lever. With squeaking, tinny cranking springs, the door cracks open, to a rapacious white embracing glow. awash the vinyl floor gleam, in diagonal across silhouettes against the street-front window, the secretary’s plump figure dwarfed by the cluttered desk.

The woman’s warm greeting smile. She ushers me along toward a door crack in the wall; she faced. I reach the doorway, waiting for an invitation. Jerry Brecker, imposing in his dark suit, sits hunched over unfurled blueprints, in the middle of an artisanal stretch counter bathing in a streaming sunlight through the street-front windows. He glances offside a hint of expectancy, trundling back, gestures me to step up, pivoting to face the adjacent vacant swivel chair.

As I sit, facing Jerry Brecker’s broad figure, stooping closer. He inquires, “What experience do you have in estimating?” 

I roll the conversation to my early teen’s apprenticeship, and two years on, when a customer of our family Kyalami poultry farm approached me with a project. I took the liberty of the builder’s obligatory three-week break. Using the opportunity to build an outbuilding and water tower, after which I returned to my employer, Mr. Haas’ scaffolding and equipment borrowed, winning more construction projects. 

My thoughts jump, ‘_Should I mention the published study?_’ The conversation didn’t lend itself to boast myself out of the league. After a brief talk, Jerry Brecker says. “How much do you want?” We fudge, as I adhere to a salesman’s motto: ‘_He who speaks first, loses._’ Jerry Brecker leans forward, his gaze heavy on me, while I’m reminding myself. ‘_Don’t budge._’  A pressure mounts through our silence, I conceded, after my persistent silence, to reply. “I don’t know...” 

“How much do you want?” Jerry Brecker asks. I’m on the verge of bursting, on the verge of ending my torture. Aetheria whispers to mind, I’m left to balk his gaze, reassess my predicament, telling myself. ‘_You can’t afford to lose._’ My ego dwarfs, raising myself from that invisible comfort, forthright I’m saying. “I just landed — You ought to know the going rate.” Jerry Brecker pauses. He reflects, then states. “Six hundred a week.”

I contain my heart from bursting, I utter a single, “Yes.” Jerry Brecker gestures in his chair, an accomplishment, his gaze returning, ‘_On the job now!_’ to the earlier blueprints, after saying. “Start on Monday. . .” His words echo in my mind, in fear of forgetting —  Aetheria’s flowering over her winning spree, as I turn an eyesight gliding through the doorway a stretch across the gleaming floor. 

I step up to the secretary, standing at her desk. ‘_Her Moon perhaps in Virgo?_’ Big, fetching eyes in her sphere. She appears to run an enterprise from a bag’s pouch alongside her chair, brimming with an office of papers and envelopes. When she looks up from a letter pinned in her fingers with a colorful logo. Pen glinting in her hand, before my voice cuts through the silence. “Do you have directions? I’m supposed to present myself at The World Financial Center, D’s construction site?” She had scribbled and torn the scribbled paper off a pad, handing me. I break away, eager to burst out in the street, for a brisk long walk settling my heart and my body in a grip of buzzing nerves.”

Upon my return, shoving the plate-glass door sticks its spring back tendency entering the hotel lobby. I retrieve my room keys, I sprint for the elevator. Emerge from the cabin. Eager to settle my coming into the city, I tweak the key, and cross my room, toss my keys, to pick up The New York Times from the bedside table, skipping headlines, sidesaddle the bed’s edge. I back wave the last interesting stories. A gaze darting, I'm eager to find in the classified small a place to stay. I’m dropping on tailored for me category, “Room for Rent.” I fervor with a red marker lock possible adverts until one’s words speak to me. Leaning forward, my legs crossed, reposing an elbow, I grab the phone, knuckles white, I dial the number. Each distant ring, fueling anticipation.

A woman’s with a raspy foreign accent answers the distant ringing tone. Forthright we chatted about the room to rent until I asked the landlady. “How much?” Not that I had any choice, but feeling good. “I’ll take it,” I declared. “Subject to viewing the room.” My Seven-Star diary open on the night table, to a fresh page, I scribble the Woodside street four-digit number, to imagine, a far outreaching street. I hang up the phone, pocket my wallet, I’m begging to relieve my tensed body since I departed Brussels. Stepping around the room, fetch toiletry bag, stuffed, closing my suitcase I kept packed. Downstairs in the lobby, I approached the receptionist. “I’m moving out,” escaped me, greeting the young man. He nods, brings out from behind the front desk my account. I paid in cash, as he called a taxi. I head back upstairs to fetch my suitcase. Upon my return, I’m called by a taxi man poking his head by the entrance’s plate-glass doors.

I follow the hurrying man toward the waiting taxi in the street, with another wave of relief washing over me. With effort, he heaves my calf-suitcase into the trunk. As the lid - Slap - close, he moves around to the driver’s side, I’m meeting him again slipping behind him at the steering wheel - SMACK - my door close. I read my destined address out loud. The engine rumbles, he pulls away, and I sink into the seat for the ride. My eyesight touring the peripheral windows, on a prophetic safari tour through the concrete jungle, out the congested streets, our way across the Brooklyn Bridge, the wide river to the opposing bank. 

The taxi veers off the bustling artery, driving into a quiet suburb, a style of houses out of American films, peek through leafy wide bend canopies. until at the pace of passing stoops mounting numbers. We coast past quaint single-family homes, my chest blooms with ease, to stop in front of a house’s bright yard girdle escaping into shadowy alleys, face-to-face curtained windows catch a breeze, I lean forward, addressing the driver, in an absentminded voice. “Will you wait here?”

Understanding, the driver nods, “Sure.” As I alight from the taxi, I’m scanning the surrounding blank windows, to a woman standing in sunlight by the gabled house’s upper-floor window, a drawn curtain at hand, looking at the disturbance in the street. I step around by the taxi’s rear fender tail lights. In fear he might drive away with my luggage, although a fallacy of my mind, I’m approaching the driver’s figure, winding down the window, to utter. “I’m leaving my luggage. I’ll be back.” Stepping heel over toes away. Across the deserted street, the woman in the window disappeared. 

A vibrant, petite middle-age woman barrel shape in a summer dress, emerges from the entrance, descends the stoop’s few stairs with a youthful spring in her step. Before reaching the sidewalk, she turns an invitational pause, ushering me inside the hallway. She veers offside, to pause, for the closing door. Climbs a short flight of stairs to a dogleg landing, returning and ascending another set, throws back glances over the handrail, to vanish the doorway light. Around the doorjamb. I catch up with the little lady beyond the dining room. ‘_Perhaps a style of the 1960s’?_’ Heading in a short corridor to an end door. She eases her pace. As I approach, she advances a grip, cranks the lever. At the pace of the hinging back door leaf, to a sentinel exposing a backyard tree’s branching foliage peeking at the window. Drop an offside glance, imagining myself slipping between the neat bedsheets, laying my head on a freshly puffed pillow, ending to look at the lady, confirming. “I’m fine renting the room.” 

Turning back to the dining room, I flick off an eyesight toward the door, with a wink at the landlady, I lay the cash on the table. “Let me fetch my luggage from the taxi.” With my wallet in hand, I descend the dogleg stairs. out to daylight, step onto the stoop. Crossing over to the serious waiting driver. I’m paying my taxi ride. With a smile, the driver steps out, heads to the trunk, lifts the lid. After exchanging my luggage, split ways exchanging, “Thank you.” Entering the house with a back glance, at the distancing taxi. I climb the upstairs, meeting the waiting landlady, by the dining table, I move on to the rear, dropping off my luggage, I return to the waiting figure standing in the far right street front window curtains filtering a glow.  

Our conversation meanders, acquainting, dotting my journey to stand before her, in exchange she laments her father, whom she left behind in Poland. I don’t delve into people’s lives, unless they conceded, as a matter of principle, instead of weighing up words, truth from false. Such as her loss, will lead me from stirring zombies from the Soviet Union communism’s wasteland, or a contingent apart, and her life alone. Our palms creep to a gradual pose on chairs’ crest rail, with two spare chairs flanking the doily covered rectangular dining table. Tempered by my Warthog’s inherent skepticism, I pose the questioned. “Are the flowers in the vase real? Or is everything here. . . Well, a touch kitsch?_’ leading me, asking. “Do you know what your birth sign is?” 

Driven by an acquainting instinct, her will like a curtain fall. “Aries,” she whispered. Her voice echoes through zodiacal hills, she didn't waver the gates to her heritage and struggles that shaped her identity’s riches for six decades. The sentinels of her mind, guard the doors to her conscious ‘Alibaba Cave,’ dug deep into the cosmic zodiacal jungle. From where she orchestrates her living spirit, fueled by the sun’ energy — The mirror of gentle breezes, ruffles the mind, across a still pond. She doesn't waver her identity’s journey to succeed as a woman in the Big Apple.

My landlady pauses, in her unwavering drive fueled by her Element of Fire. With a sigh, releasing the chair. “Would you join me? I have an urgent problem attending to?” I agree. She leads to toward the shadowy doorway. I trail her descending the stairs and steps into the sun-dappled street. She walks the sidewalk to reach a Fastback Chevrolet Cavalier, inviting me to the passenger door. Meeting her again inside the car, she pulls away from the curb. zigzag through the deserted suburban streets. emerging to ride underneath the elevated metro. The overhead gantry wiping sun-louvers over the windshield as she plow through the cast shades dropping sunlight curtains flickering along a late morning trickling traffic, pulling off to a gas station. She steps out, heading toward a yellow cab parked across the driveway. She engages in a brief discussion with the taxi driver. Turns away to face a mechanic approaching from the hollow depths of a workshop doorway.

Her tense negotiation, prolonged by fists of knuckles on her hips, I catch the silent movie scene. ‘_What? To repair the car? Don’t you have an alternative?_’ She defends her sphere of livelihood. I don’t envy her. After her perilous words, like a pageant to win a yellow taxi medallion. She added saying. “A license costs hundred-and fifty thousand dollars a year.” My landlady turns around, left with option, approaching, her face etched with worry. The door sighs open, she steps in behind the wheel, baffled, her face worn down from operating the taxi. As she pulls away, I have in mind my concern — a trial run to Battery Park, and wait to break, asking directions to The Wold Financial Center before presenting myself on Monday morning. 

A few days later, I commuted downtown, toward the Twin Towers, to walk the plaza. Descend underground to the mall. Meeting a morning wave of people surging from the escalators, flooding the immediate hallway, into scattering, around me, thinning out through passageways. I ascend to street level. I head for the stubby four towers on the riverbank, arriving at the construction site office, greeting the chargehand laying out my job.

On workdays evenings, I linger under the Twin Towers mall, drawn to colorful and changing styles of postcard designs on tourniquets trundled out the small store my evening to the passageway my upcoming to display. From the my morning crossing along half a dozen escalators, for the pick a few cards. ‘_My boys! Lionel and Gavin, you’re in my heart._’ I lick stamps, bought together with the cards. Find a moment on a surface, write a brief note in memory: Though continents separate us, with a promise to myself. ‘_Cookies, you’re so dear, not forgotten._’ And jotted a silly note, addressed, to drop the cards in a mail box, onto heading home. Approaching on my last leg across the bridge to the polish woman’s house. 

Following my Polish landlady’s sweeping gesture across the backyard. I’m stepping away downstairs to the suburb streets, lugging a week’s worth of dirty clothes. Arriving a driver at the wheel of the bus, idling in the foreground of a massive zig-zagging staircase to the platform’s elevated shed entry. I avert my gaze from the imposing structure.

I’m sweeping an eyesight across the square, and amid small local kaleidoscopic strip of retailers stores. I’m narrowing my approach toward the laundromat. Passing the door, greeting the friendly Chinese woman, responding incessant bowing nods, from behind the counter. I unload the bulk of my laundry, while she fingers unfold grading and counting rhythmic each item of clothing. She sidesteps to issuing the receipt, which she hands over, wishing me farewell, as I interject, “Thank you.” While she nods me farewell, stepping outdoors. Empty-handed, I track the few street blocks back home to my polish landlady. 

A few weeks into leaving my landlady’s front door stoop, to the street, my daily routine commuting to the World Financial Center, reporting to Bock D’s site office, to a mind buckling and fist thick stack of blueprints. Rifling through floor plans, to detailed drawings. To remove an outdated blueprint and insert the updated ones. While a driveway away, carpenters erect studs and clad with plasterboard the floors spaces out, and together working the week out, to another foreseeable weekend, commuting home to my Yellow Taxi landlady.

A weekend to duty, I'm off to the laundromat. Behind the opening door, exciting the Chinese petite woman, stretching a smile, bowing with skittering mind searching eyes, preemptive calling my laundry, while bombards my mind with greetings, until her eyes jump from the counter, pause her repetitive greeting word, as I handed her the ticket. fetching my laundry, bends away behind the counter. Straighten with my wrapped clothes washed and ironed, I settle with a banknote, her word leaks from my mind, wishing her farewell, turning away, with locked eyes, out of respect while she insists bowing, and thanking me, I supposed. 

After weeks ‘ cadence of dropping off greetings, and fetching my laundry farewell, a freeing sense emerges. Taking the backstreets as a shortcut on foot, to and from a flurry of people scattered across the square amid the elevated metro station shelter. until I’m waking away with a lingering discomfort, as I’m greetings and farewell wishes my mind borrowing her single repetitive word, alienating my ethnicity, with a transcendent bogged Chinese culture, to reflect. ‘_I want to grow a stranger in my skin?_’ considering home by the Polish woman. 

As I commuted home in the evenings’ fading light, the teasing haphazard upright spalled crack from the sidewalk to the concrete parapet top. While revealing the rusty structural reinforcing cage. The haphazard and obvious gnaw at my mind, by the crack’s stark lined-up entrenched single railway track, picturing, a concept of duality to discover —.

The exposed railway track in the spalled concrete feels like a  glimpse into my future. Though interrupted, its evanescent path underpass the next arched bridge, jest a block away. Yet, a sense of its journey echoes into the blurry distance. Am I fortunate, given a glimpse through the crosshairs of fate, forcing me to reflect at discovering voiceless twists of fate on the horizon? 

Until I returned in the evening, after a few weeks commuting to the construction site office at Battery Park. arriving home in the dark. Stepping into a brightly lit interior, upstairs I’m met by a breathtaking surprise. My Polish landlady stands beside a cake, her face beaming. “Happy Birthday!” she exclaims. 

My landlady brandished me, with generosity leaving me speechless, and an exposed fumble for words, seeking the friendliness she deserves. But I froze, grappling through mental constraints. Oblivious to societal niceties. I’m left to raise from a concrete construction had honed my logic, words to address an issue which wasn’t raised in my childhood. With six siblings, we were devoid of birthdays celebrations. Until Such as an afterthought, I participated. Jean celebrating our little boys, Lionel, and three years on Gavin’s birthday, creating cherish memories through treats and photographs. 

The monstrous iguana from my childhood, with its threatening reddish spikes and whipping tail. flashes its blueish-green dewlap and flat unblinking stare threatening to consume me, fighting against my Gemini seeking elegance, ‘_, . . .let the music play. . .._’ transcend my body — It’s no moment for indulging in the iced cake dressed on the table. I take a deep breath as my landlady framed regal white lace curtains veiled window’s night in the street. My ego battles itself, seeking the right words to tone her kindness. I’m my prolonged silence, she leads a hand on the backrest, pulling a chair. I follow suit in silence. When, the air-condition technician, and co-occupant arrive home from downstairs, breaking the stalemate. Our landlady invited him to join us. The man taking the offside chair, extending his thanks, to a stark reminder of when we befriended. “We repair, guaranteed to be called back to the site after a short time.” Echoes in my head. While our landlady slices the cake, dishes up to an extended clinging of silverware and chinaware. I’m munching alien to my taste. Yet, they chat. Turning their conversation toward the deeply personal — likes, dislikes, ideal partner. It’s exhaustive, as she exudes a strong smothering liking toward me, to discordance, my mind’s pleading. ‘_Shut up!_’ until spiking my mind, words tumbling from my lips. “I like them (girls) young!” Crashing a wave of regret over me. 

Our landlady’s understanding eyes, tinged with a withering body, clears the table and disperse to our rooms. In the mornings, I emerge early without crossing paths with my landlady. Though I’m bearing my words’ deed. While commuting to-and-fro work dissipating my guilt through the following two weeks into the ‘Bicentennial’ rumored Independence Day weekend. Then, on Friday’s fourth of July, commuting like a workday, the deserted mall beneath the Twin Towers’ emerges to a street dripping with traffic, I cross over. I veer away from my usual construction access road to block D, without a workman in the roundabouts, drawn downstream to walk without infringing on people’s early gathering for the evening fireworks. Passing along the erect World Financial Center. coming around stubby towers opening downriver fleets of ships scatter the waters for a catch of Independence Day’ celebration. While the Statue of Liberty is my confusion’s ‘Centennial’ celebration. However, the Lady sends me a breeze washes over me, carrying a sense of transformation through the taffrail. Transporting me re-living my toddler’s awes on a ship’s deck sailing the seas — The vast Mediterranean, to a stark contrast sailing through the Suez Canal desert. But lost on the Indian Ocean, I sought land for an eternity, until dirt etched the horizon, to advancing the African continent. 

By afternoon, I’m leaving Battery Park behind, the residue of a childhood dread for the night’s fireworks. I lingered out a gathering crowd, a rhyme popping into my head, a familiar refrain: ‘_the city that never sleeps._’ Craving for solace en route home, searching for a whipped up ice cream, to squelch my headaches. As if at hand walking with a child’s whiny, to spot an ice-cream parlor. I’m standing by the counter watching over the attendant’s hand swirling a soft serve cone, returning, poking the top with a flaky chocolate stick. Wandering away sucking, soothing my headaches, blaming in refrain: ‘_The city that never sleeps._’

Reaching home, I’m greeted by my Polish landlady. Later in the evening, we stand near lounge chairs, engrossed in fireworks bursting on the television screen. A sizzling and popping transport me to my childhood — standing on the soft beach sands captivated by the sizzles and blooming explosions overhead, yet terrified by dying balloons of vibrant starry spattering colors. Aware of my unjustified fear, but mind drawn to the magic of transformation collapsing skies trailing smoke tendrils.