Culture

When Reality Feels One Alien Short of a Sci-Fi Plot

New York City is many things at 2:30 a.m.

Romantic if you’re in love. Philosophical if you’re walking home alone. Regret-adjacent if you’ve just eaten pizza you didn’t need.

But every once in a while, it turns cinematic.

A few nights ago, a man apparently launched himself into what can only be described as a one-man chaos tour of Midtown. Security footage shows him breaking into a restaurant, marching straight to the bar like he had a reservation with destiny, grabbing a bottle of gin, taking a swig, and then smashing glass like he was punctuating a sentence only he could hear.

Then he leaves.

Not because he’s done. Because he’s just getting started.

Next stop was a hotel, where he allegedly punches an employee and grabs a fire extinguisher. Which he then takes next door to a 7-Eleven and discharges like he’s battling invisible flames only he can see.

At this point, I’m not proud to say my brain did not go to crime statistics or public safety policy.

No.

My brain went straight to the movie Men in Black.

Because honestly? If you told me this was the moment when a poorly disguised alien malfunctioned in Midtown, I would not have ruled it out.

There’s something about these sudden, kinetic bursts of destruction that feel less like choices and more like eruptions. Like watching someone’s internal wiring spark and short-circuit in real time.

What was happening in his mind?

Was it panic? Mania? Fear? Delusion? Rage?
Was his brain sprinting so fast the world couldn’t keep up?

Did everything feel urgent, symbolic, necessary, like he was inside a story only he understood?

When people unravel publicly, it rarely looks dramatic from the inside. It usually feels logical. Pressing. Immediate.

The mind is very good at convincing us that the thing we’re about to do is the only possible next step.

Even if that step involves gin, shattered glass, and a fire extinguisher crusade across Manhattan.

We like to imagine sanity as a fixed state in that it is a solid floor we all stand on. But the truth is it’s more like balance. A constant, invisible negotiation between our emotions, our thoughts, our stress, our sleep, our chemistry, our history.

Most days we hold that balance.

Some days, someone doesn’t.

Maybe that’s why stories like this fascinate us. Not because they’re monstrous. But because they’re human.

1 reply »

  1. SMiLes Dear Miriam Some
    Days Some Months
    Even Some Years

    Or even minutes

    or seconds or

    Less Yes there

    is No letter or word
    that FiTS the Human Condition

    As Even Those Who Own It May

    Be Lost in Never More Land

    Attempting to find

    THeir Way

    Back
    Without
    Any Map
    Just Feeling New
    Things in the DarK
    Never Experienced Before
    Like LiGHT Becoming DarK

    Or Cold Becoming Hot

    Until We Find

    That Yes
    No Thing is Set in Stone

    For What Blossoms

    or Withers

    Within

    is Sure to
    Come to Change

    For Instance That Spring
    Day in 2017 After a Common
    Cold Virus Losing my Sense of Smell
    And Taste As of Course Both Are Connected

    Until What i Still Describe as The Doomsday Smell
    Day Yes i Remember the Day When the Solar Eclipse
    Came on August 21st of 2017 Ah Yes the Smell Came Back

    The Taste Came

    Back All as Rotting

    Flesh Coming to Find

    That What We Always Counted

    On as Smell and Taste The Brain

    May Have to Learn How to Do Again

    Meanwhile then until all the Adjustments

    Come Just Rotting Flesh in Smell and Taste

    A Whole Year Until Gradually Smell Came Back

    So Many Strange Smells and Tastes And Probably

    Never Exactly
    What Taste
    And Smell
    Was Before

    Never the Less Our Emotions
    Aren’t Only Connected to Smell

    That Was So Much Easier than
    Losing the Memory of the Feeling of
    A SMiLe Indeed there are deeper Pleasures

    In Life
    Than

    Food or
    Drink Alone

    Never the Less Then Rotting
    Flesh Was Then for Taste and
    Smell Grin and Bear It With

    Great Thanks and Praise

    Still of Actually

    Feeling
    A SMiLe For Real

    Some Days You Just Wake Up

    And Say Holy CR8P i Had No Idea

    Hell is That Grey SHaDE to BLacK Abyss

    Even

    More

    “Dante’s
    Rings” Just
    Waves that
    Go Out and Return

    Differently iN Tides

    DarK Thru LiGHT

    DarK iS LiGHT

    LiGHT iS DarK
    With SMiLes..:)

    Like

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