Doublebreeze

The City (obviously[naturally{of course}]) exists in many versions of reality. I don't like the word "dimensions", which you might have expected here. It's too rigid, too quantifying. The City's existence alongside these axes is much more fuzzy, much less clear than the word "dimensions" would allow; there are no manuals to all the different directions a street can bend within it. However, most (and by most, I mean "almost all save me, perhaps there's someone else but I haven't met them yet") citizens of the City don't interact with these realities beyond the possession of the knowledge that they exist, a faint awareness of the possibilities lurking just to the side of the cobblestones they know and love. Thus, any exciting tales of travel, whether through time (now there's a "dimension"!) or the self or genealogy, any exciting ideas of alternatives, of a very safe jaunt into what-could-have-been, are snipped in the bud by the impossibility of access. The denizens of the City continue to live their singular lives, whether boring or exciting, without the thrilling possibility of encounter, of conflict, of friction that is generated when one faces choices they have made and perhaps should have made differently.

Except for on one street. Silver Street lies in the western part of the City, but not so close to the water that you'd call it a beachfront. Instead, it's one of those winding paths you get in neighborhoods that used to be docks,  a narrow passageway which recalls warrens, carts plodding along and brisk commerce managed from the same houses in which the owners lived (every building was "mixed use" in the past, before the curse of modernism). On good days, when the wind was coming off of the waves in any measure, the smell of salt, fish and wood flooded its air. The people who lived on Silver Street were wholesome if not fancy, dotted with the odd protogentrifier, the smell of money but not too much money mingling with that of the salt/wood to create a weird scent that was not entirely uncomfortable. Now, the area had changed but not all for the worse. Not for the City clear divisions between good and bad, sharp lines in the sand/concrete, easy definitions of what does or doesn't make sense. Eventually, while the traditional storefronts are all long gone, they were replaced by boutiques of many types, people trading either their niche crafts or the niche products made from said crafts, catering to those who frequented the area for its "charm" and "allure". Oh, and in Silver Street the veil ("border" is much too *tight *a word, going well with "dimensions", which I had earlier discarded) between realities is thin.

It isn't thin enough to allow people to fall through. It wasn't thin enough that Silver Street became a hub, a center from which spokes struck out to other realities, facilitating tourism of the oddest kind. No, it wasn't thin enough for any of that but it *is *thin enough for oddities to assault the senses and often take those unaware (which again, as far as I know, was everyone but myself) on a heady trip through uncertainty, self doubt and double guessing as they muttered to themselves things like "Argent Street? Pretty sure I turned on to Silve...oh, that's odd" or "My barbershop is gone! The City changes so fast these days. Oh! It's...on the other side of Silver Street? What an amusing lapse of memory!" and so on, and so forth. It is thin enough to allow the odd thing to travel its loosely defined tundras and prairie lands (some of the realities had *actual *tundras and prairies, realities where the City had never come to be) such as small animals, trinkets, food, or even a peculiar smell or some other trick of the senses. Oh, and it also allowed those with the right knowledge, perspective and internal makeup (that is to say, me)  to ever so slightly pushon the elusive ligaments of Silver Street and emerge in some other place.

Alright, I'll cut the flowery structure and get to the point. My name is Edmond Doublebreeze. No, Doublebreeze is not my given surname. Yes, Edmond *is *my given first name. No, I won't tell you what my actual surname is. Doublebreeze is what I mostly go by, a moniker I had selected for myself quite a few years ago to play a game with those around me, a game like a decidedly devilish criminal might play on the police before the clever detective comes along to defuse, a game whose central move was to hide who you were in plain sight. Ever since I can remember myself, I was the fulcrum of two, internal winds. Not mutually exclusive, they would often blow at the same time and mingle into a strange regiment of prevalent winds, a barometric map of my psyche. One isthe afternoon/evening breeze, an intoxicating thing blowing off of the sea the City resides on. It is a frivolous thing, like a child pregnant with the mythical knowledge awarded to children which is, at the end of the day, mystery. It leads me winding through the streets, heart full at the sight of a couple kissing, or a tree blooming, or shadow falling on the corner of the street like so, alighting everything by contrast.

Its fellow is, in a city which, again, does not suffer clear divides, a darker but not more malignant type of wind. It is the heavy wind of night, of pre-dawn, a stifling thing all jagged edges and whipping coattails. It sends me into a contemplative mood, a bloated melancholy that feasts on loops and internal speculation. And yet, I have done some of my finest work under its auspices, my eyes made sharp by the churning air, prickled to sensitivity by the acrid flavors of the latter wind. Why am I telling you all of this when you *clearly *care about Silver Street and its, for lack of a better term, magic? It is because these streams, these double breezes, somehow tie me to that street's character. How? Don't ask me; does the sailor know how the wind fills their sails? Of course they do but I'm not a sailor and none of this is a trade or science. It is just the way things are wired; when the breezes blow strongly through me, whether together or alone, I am inexorably drawn to Silver Street and its strange twists and turns and I can *make *that street twist and turn.

It's nothing so conscious as those words might hint at; there is no will, no magus's gesture. Often, when the winds are blowing especially strong and it feels like my fingertips might catch lightning, I don't even notice I'm there, not to mention *heading *there. I stumble into the familiar square, where Silver Street adjoins with Coronation, and pass the wide-door'd knick knack shop that coronates Silver Street. I walk a few more steps, laughing or crying or shouting, and, suddenly, I am somewhere else. Once that transformation happens, the breezes disappear as suddenly as they came and my psyche is becalmed, left to motivate itself by its own devices. Usually, that's not a problem; the *alternative *to Silver Street is motivation enough by itself. It's not often dangerous (although some versions I've stumbled upon have contained some form of weird, urban violence) but it is always fascinating. The other Silver Streets don't exist in a vacuum; it's not a universe full of alternatives of just this one street! How dull would that be?

Instead, the entire world around Silver Street (now *there's *a Jerusalem for you) is also alternate, different, reconfigured. Is it because of Silver Street? That is, is Silver Street somehow so important that any changes to it are reflected in the world around it? That thought depresses me and so I answer, to myself since who would I have this conversation with, in the negative. It's just that every Silver Street needs a world within which to exist and thus, whatever malevolent hand set the world(s) in motion, gave it a place which corresponds to it. On the aforementioned Argent Street, the City is a small commune that lives on the trade generated by nearby apple orchards. On S.I.L.V.E.R St., the neighborhood is dominated by personality merchants who cut and tailor opinions and moods to suit their customers' wishes for the day. On Sterling Alley, the people wall wear top-hots except for on the 23rd of April where they shower each other with books and gives children roses. On S Way, talk is only allowed in whispers and serifs are currency, the rich owning all the sharp sounds they might wish for. And, finally (and one of my personal favorites) on Mercury Drive, the lights are all inverse and they make the most beautiful paintings in the world.

"Doublebreeze must be rich", you're now probably thinking, my dear guest. "How is he living in this, frankly and not to be rude, run down apartment? He has probably traded on the riches of a million versions and made a fortune!" your head is telling you, in that behind-my-eyes voice we all have. But, my dear guest, the fact is that I am not rich, not in the way citizens of our own City think of wealth in any case. I have always had my eyes and ears and olfactory senses geared towards one thing and one thing only. When the breezes blow through me and make my gait light as ball lightning or ponderous as a pachyderm or a mixture of both (resulting in a lurching dance of sorts, one part of me flying through the air after my own heart while another drags itself into the dirt), they eventually take me to the ever-winding ways of Silver Street in search of only one thing.

Dessert. In all versions of Silver Street, like all things are different, there are desserts. There are patisseries and boulangeries and boutique stalls and family owned bakeries and glazers versed in the Seventy Arts of Cooking and wonderful alchemists that wield their science in the ever elusive search of culinary perfection. And I shop at all of their places of business and I take back with me that and only that; desserts. I am the knight of the buttressed cake, a duelist of the rarest Order of the Pastry, a marvelous baron in the byzantine court of desserts! And here, in this shabby apartment, living my not-quite-ordinary life in the prison of my double breezes, I, Doublebreeze, partake and store and catalog said desserts. Come, come my guest, up you go and do set aside that dreadful cup of coffee I make for those not initiated (for I have had this conversation with select citizens of our City before, because eating alone, and especially dessert, is boring) and follow me into the Solarium and gaze upon

Apple dumplings from Eastern Pennsylvania, shipped to Argentate Boulevard at ludicrous expense, sachertorte straight from the hands of Franz Sacher while Metternich calls in at 361 Bright Lane, kunefe from Acre, sweet as dreams, chajá from Uruguay so fresh it still remembers the green plains where its dairy came from purchased at quite a price on our very own Silver Street from a lady underneath a pecan tree, mamounia from Aleppo, cream-y surface steeped in the history of ages pilfered for a smile by me from a lovely gentleman with quite gentle hands on the turn of Pearl Avenue as it spills into the ocean, marzipan from Toledo, still ringing with the sugary love that made it, Saint Honore from the well-lit streets of the City of Light blessed by the touch of the Living Saint who still walks its cobblestones at night, whispering to chefs who come to speak with him from all over the world, and all sorts of cakes, donuts, pastries, chocolate, and delights besides and all of them sampled and returned here by me from the alternate versions of this City. Possessed by my winds, set alight by flickering fire and doused by unplumbed depths, I gallivant from place to place on an endless quest for the perfect Chalice, one which I complete again and again: a quest for dessert.

Now, my guest. Shall we eat? I feel a light breeze blowing from the sea, carrying with it magic and peace and sanity and pleasure. Come, let's eat! The doublebreezes blow.