Sunday, January 7, 2007

The great towers and the industry that used to be

I am walking like a skeleton. My bones are banging against the bags that are my skin. I can walk however I want. I am alone, and there are big towers everywhere. Everything is gray, and the only thing that shows color is my blood. I am definitely somewhere, because I am with myself. But I could be anywhere. Therefore, I am nowhere.

But I am not nowhere in the sense that everything is lost and nothing means anything. I am nowhere in the sense that I am separated from the other humans. My actions are being watched, alone, by the great creator.

I am stumbling between building and building. Great big gray water towers. Little restaurants here and there. Underneath train tracks that are so loud. These tracks would not be tolerated in the downtown, in the uptown, in the hip parts of town. These are the remains of humans a long time ago. Factories and towers that people used to slave in.

These train tracks and water towers that are way high above me are only here in this nowhere part of town. There are no nasty people. There are no nice people. There are no rich people. There is just me, huge stone and metal, and the sky. This is the only place in the city where lost souls can wander and actually find something.

I can walk the way I want here. That is my freedom. I walk with my heart and let my bones throw themselves to the north, the south, the east, and the west. My body is my home to decorate the way I please. If I really walk with my heart, God will be pleased. Here, God and I are one, and everything is just fine.

My clothes are long and drag on the floor. My clothes bunch and bunch as I get shorter and closer to the ground. I am flannel, I am cotton. I disintegrate, God watches as I become dirt and nods his head in assurance that I am following my heart. Then he cackles with a giant smile like the Buddha as I appear beside him.

Then I have to leave and things come back into color. I am not the only red. I have to get on trains and buy groceries and lather myself in soap. I have to paint boxes and use vacuum cleaners and tip tap my fingers on aluminum machines that organize my thoughts and collect my data for me. Everything is too many colors, and God can’t see me through all of the bullshit.
(jc)