Let's talk for a while. I mean really talk. Let's put away the metaphors and the allusions, the allegories and the confusion. Let's just look at us.
At what is.
The city. Lowercase 'c' but no less important. Cars fill up the roads. Thousands of endless cars. From the window of the traffic helicopter they resemble ants, moving too and fro in hurried motion. Everywhere someone must be somewhere that is not here. I hear the marketing slogan in my head from Ford himself, "Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car." But I cannot help but see that every somewhere else is not something else.
The same smog. The same crappy buildings built next to ones trying to be nice. The same line after line after line of advertising. The same private little enclaves of serenity – beautiful 3 bedroom houses with a little yard and a big driveway – ignoring the filth that stagnates a few miles away. (Perhaps hoping that the trees will save them.)
The same in Canada. The same in France. The same in England. The same in Thailand. My father tells me it is soon to be the same in Laos. I feel it is sure to be the same in a community near you.
And with the city comes the culture. That almost-American, world-dominant-intellectual/local-belief/marketable tradition cross culture. The myriad of beliefs and systems that resembles socially those roadways that they develop physically. In the west I know they call it multi-culturalism. In 2nd world countries, they call it progress. Here, where the destitute live side by side the rich, they laugh and simply call it life.
The city is such a big project. Bigger than the two of us, at least. I fear that it will almost certainly be completed. People get up every day and depend entirely on it for their survival. The markets, the cars, the high-rise buildings with their office jobs. It is the combined ingenuity of a billion people working together for a mutual but individual sustained happiness.
I don't want to get lost in flowery words. I just mean that the whole world is vast. The city always reminds me of that inevitable upward progression. Of what happens when more individual people than you can count are observed as a whole. The city is all about trying to act as a whole.
My first reaction is always the same. I hate the city, no matter its form. Here, there, Vancouver or Bangkok. L.A. or New York. I suppose that's because it always looks exactly like madness. It looks like people packed in, each working too hard for their individual space. And yet, people choose to be there. Not everyone, but so many people choose to be there, to commute into that closed space every day. It makes my heart sink.
But there is something about it that tickles me. There is something that makes me feel small, but not humbled. After the grumpiness disappears and the nausea fades, it is slowly replaced by an empowering sense of anonymity. Here is another quote in my head for the city: "you can never step in the same river twice." Those cars drive by at miles per hour, but I am never seen more than once by them. My dirtied, inconsistant, wandering thought never knows itself twice... even though it sometimes feels like I am in the same place.
And all the while, the city will be whatever it will be. While I am helplessly refreshed in it, it does not need to be refreshed by me. It is strong and steady. It continues. It is the cumulation of all its people and they are many.
With this, the city frees me. I don't like it, it doesn't sit right, and it feels like a certain recipe for disaster. But every day that depresses is, without a doubt, a new depression. Every time I breathe, I can always be baptized there in different smog. Everything is new. Nobody needs to know me.
And so, if you and I go together, we can be lost together. Because it's bigger than either of us. We can be as loud and as great as we want, and there will never be a shortage of people to hear us. And, if we fail, or want to disappear, there is always a taxi and always a train. As soon as it picks us up, we can be gone. Lost in thousands of endless cars.
That's the bounty of this madness. That's the beauty of the city.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Alphabet of Unfamiliar Symbols
That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
Margaret Atwood, ‘Happy Endings’
We begin, as always, with a question – ‘Why?’. Why do we write, why do we subject ourselves to the torture of it? It’s not an easy thing, creation. We split ourselves in half when we write, conscious and subconscious, mundane and mystic, parent and child – one thinks of Athena springing fully formed from poor Zeus’s head, spitting venom and fury at her father as he gives birth to her – so our creations betray us. Our creations are, inevitably, so much better than we are. We are feeble pink things, writhing and mewling like pigs meant for the slaughterhouse –but our creations are bright, well-lit, adorned with streamers and jewels. Pretty things, while we are ugly.
We are like ravens, stealing the shiny bits.
***
They built her prison walls from bones and skin.
She scrabbles at the stone floor. The first and second fingers of her left hand are nothing but bone now; bone to match the perverse scaffolding of her home. She scratches lines in the stone, marking every day she still breathes. Not for hope, not for remembrance; it’s just that the pain feels so good.
Some days she thinks she has been turned inside out, and the bars of her prison are her own bones, dislocated and splayed, her own skin stretched tight across the impossible contours of bones and cartilage; and she is sloshing about in the soupy wreckage of her innards, nibbling on her own slippery heart, sucking the blood out of her fat arteries.
Other days she simply thinks she has gone insane. Neither of these things is true.
In truth, the Dogs are her jailers. They bring her cat food to eat, from time to time; they enjoy the irony of it. They have constructed this elegant little prison from the bones and skin of previous prisoners; they delight in telling her this.
***
Me and Alice man, we were so fuckin’ high that day, man I don’t even know…But we saw things. Alice saw things. You know me, I’m not that fuckin’ reliable, okay, but Alice…she’s pretty goddamn straight, right, I don’t even know how I got her to take the pills, but she did, and the things she saw. Jesus. City of Bones, that’s what she called it. I mean, I saw some weird shit, but Alice, she saw something real. Something fuckin’ realer than you or me, that’s for sure. She said she always knew it was there, the City she called it, and I swear I could hear the fuckin’ capital C when she said it. She only told me this when she was drunk, and I thought it was some funny shit, Miss Proper letting off steam and narrating her own fuckin’ fantasy novel for kicks, but that day I fed her the pills she saw something else. Something even more out of this world, seriously. She asked me if I saw the City of Bones, coming up ahead, she said it was thundering towards us, the City made up of the bones of giant elephants, all these buildings made of dead animals, she said their bones were welded together with something the Alchemists called rubedo (I looked it up, man, it’s a real word, she didn’t make this shit up), and the rubedo allowed the creatures to move even though they were actual buildings where the people lived, only the City was always moving ‘cause the bones could never stay still. Man, I looked where she was pointing, and I could see the City coming, I swear I saw it, but only for a second. It was like that Dali painting, man, you know the one with the naked chick and the tigers and the elephants in the background, on those long thin spider legs, walking through the ocean? Except it was nothing like that, it was hundreds of white buildings crashing like a herd of horses towards us. I saw it man, I swear, I saw the fuckin’ City of Bones. It was there in the distance, and there was some music playing too; I couldn’t catch the melody of it, it faded in and out, I know I’m a fuckin’ musician but I couldn’t figure out what instruments were being played, it sounded like harps and timpani sometimes, other times like screaming and violins, total dissonance, fuckin’ Yoko Ono shit. I still hear that music in my nightmares, some nights. I’ve tried to re-create it, but I can’t man, it was the music of the City of Bones, I’ll never…
***
In Which The Author Steals Shamelessly from The Wasteland
how long
how long dragging our bones
across the earth, across the red rock
and the river,
the waterless river
at my back
at my back i hear
the dead men the stuffed men
the men who are not hollow
merely nameless
faces with pearl buttons for eyes
whisper a children's song
whisper it while the day is long long long
long ago
a long time ago men drowned
when the water was queen and we sailed
greeting dead men waving
and we sailed
while the women the women sing a tavern song
and the hours are long long long
and the man
did you see the man
the man with a pearl a pearl for an eye
muttering unblinking
the songs that we sing
the children's song the women's song
the man
the man folded in on himself
the cards folded in two
the drowned man
the sailor man
the fisher king
here are his lands
and his river
and there is no water
***
Nothing but pastiche, ragged at the edges, quoted so many times as to be a kind of word-wallpaper, the lettered and intellectual equivalent of elevator music – familiar, inoffensive, nauseating.
***
The priests and priestesses built their bone Temple next to the waterless river, on the red rock, far from the City and its extravagances. They unearthed the bones of long-dead creatures, apocalyptic Leviathans, tyrannosaurus rex, wyverns. They cleaned the bones and carved their symbols into them, built their Temple scapula upon fibula upon skull upon clavicle. On the red rock, next to the waterless river, they built the Temple higher and higher. At night they circled the Temple of Bone, and sang a children’s song.
London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London bridge is falling down, my fair lady
Round and round and round and round, around the Bone Temple they went, and they go.
Margaret Atwood, ‘Happy Endings’
We begin, as always, with a question – ‘Why?’. Why do we write, why do we subject ourselves to the torture of it? It’s not an easy thing, creation. We split ourselves in half when we write, conscious and subconscious, mundane and mystic, parent and child – one thinks of Athena springing fully formed from poor Zeus’s head, spitting venom and fury at her father as he gives birth to her – so our creations betray us. Our creations are, inevitably, so much better than we are. We are feeble pink things, writhing and mewling like pigs meant for the slaughterhouse –but our creations are bright, well-lit, adorned with streamers and jewels. Pretty things, while we are ugly.
We are like ravens, stealing the shiny bits.
***
They built her prison walls from bones and skin.
She scrabbles at the stone floor. The first and second fingers of her left hand are nothing but bone now; bone to match the perverse scaffolding of her home. She scratches lines in the stone, marking every day she still breathes. Not for hope, not for remembrance; it’s just that the pain feels so good.
Some days she thinks she has been turned inside out, and the bars of her prison are her own bones, dislocated and splayed, her own skin stretched tight across the impossible contours of bones and cartilage; and she is sloshing about in the soupy wreckage of her innards, nibbling on her own slippery heart, sucking the blood out of her fat arteries.
Other days she simply thinks she has gone insane. Neither of these things is true.
In truth, the Dogs are her jailers. They bring her cat food to eat, from time to time; they enjoy the irony of it. They have constructed this elegant little prison from the bones and skin of previous prisoners; they delight in telling her this.
***
Me and Alice man, we were so fuckin’ high that day, man I don’t even know…But we saw things. Alice saw things. You know me, I’m not that fuckin’ reliable, okay, but Alice…she’s pretty goddamn straight, right, I don’t even know how I got her to take the pills, but she did, and the things she saw. Jesus. City of Bones, that’s what she called it. I mean, I saw some weird shit, but Alice, she saw something real. Something fuckin’ realer than you or me, that’s for sure. She said she always knew it was there, the City she called it, and I swear I could hear the fuckin’ capital C when she said it. She only told me this when she was drunk, and I thought it was some funny shit, Miss Proper letting off steam and narrating her own fuckin’ fantasy novel for kicks, but that day I fed her the pills she saw something else. Something even more out of this world, seriously. She asked me if I saw the City of Bones, coming up ahead, she said it was thundering towards us, the City made up of the bones of giant elephants, all these buildings made of dead animals, she said their bones were welded together with something the Alchemists called rubedo (I looked it up, man, it’s a real word, she didn’t make this shit up), and the rubedo allowed the creatures to move even though they were actual buildings where the people lived, only the City was always moving ‘cause the bones could never stay still. Man, I looked where she was pointing, and I could see the City coming, I swear I saw it, but only for a second. It was like that Dali painting, man, you know the one with the naked chick and the tigers and the elephants in the background, on those long thin spider legs, walking through the ocean? Except it was nothing like that, it was hundreds of white buildings crashing like a herd of horses towards us. I saw it man, I swear, I saw the fuckin’ City of Bones. It was there in the distance, and there was some music playing too; I couldn’t catch the melody of it, it faded in and out, I know I’m a fuckin’ musician but I couldn’t figure out what instruments were being played, it sounded like harps and timpani sometimes, other times like screaming and violins, total dissonance, fuckin’ Yoko Ono shit. I still hear that music in my nightmares, some nights. I’ve tried to re-create it, but I can’t man, it was the music of the City of Bones, I’ll never…
***
In Which The Author Steals Shamelessly from The Wasteland
how long
how long dragging our bones
across the earth, across the red rock
and the river,
the waterless river
at my back
at my back i hear
the dead men the stuffed men
the men who are not hollow
merely nameless
faces with pearl buttons for eyes
whisper a children's song
whisper it while the day is long long long
long ago
a long time ago men drowned
when the water was queen and we sailed
greeting dead men waving
and we sailed
while the women the women sing a tavern song
and the hours are long long long
and the man
did you see the man
the man with a pearl a pearl for an eye
muttering unblinking
the songs that we sing
the children's song the women's song
the man
the man folded in on himself
the cards folded in two
the drowned man
the sailor man
the fisher king
here are his lands
and his river
and there is no water
***
Nothing but pastiche, ragged at the edges, quoted so many times as to be a kind of word-wallpaper, the lettered and intellectual equivalent of elevator music – familiar, inoffensive, nauseating.
***
The priests and priestesses built their bone Temple next to the waterless river, on the red rock, far from the City and its extravagances. They unearthed the bones of long-dead creatures, apocalyptic Leviathans, tyrannosaurus rex, wyverns. They cleaned the bones and carved their symbols into them, built their Temple scapula upon fibula upon skull upon clavicle. On the red rock, next to the waterless river, they built the Temple higher and higher. At night they circled the Temple of Bone, and sang a children’s song.
London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London bridge is falling down, my fair lady
Round and round and round and round, around the Bone Temple they went, and they go.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Grande, Five Pump, No Water, Chai Tea Latte
qwertyuiop
asdfghjkl
zxcvbnm
She wears black tights and a decent black skirt. Her shoes are heels, clicking angrily across the coffee shop floor. A jacket conceals the rest of her dress and mirrors the sound of her feet. She orders a grande soy americano misto.
His hair is carefully gelled into a particular mess. His earring studs display his casual acceptance of adventure. His t-shirt is oversized and hides the fact that his jeans are worn well below his waist. His belt, a gaudy shining thing, has only aesthetic purpose. He grabs a venti chocolate chip frappe.
Her purse announces confidently that she knows Prada personally. Her makeup declares the claim dubious. All her clothes are new, but none of them fit. Her smile is worn like everything else – an expensive cover-up. She purchases a tall skinny vanilla latte.
He wears a long trench coat to conceal the pot-belly of his age. A tie and today’s newspaper are in place to distract attention from his form to his profession. He wears his heart on his sleeve when the barista smiles at him. She reminds him of his daughter. He pays for a grande americano.
He has a dirty backpack over his shoulder and his bike helmet in his hand. All of his clothes were made in Canada. 10% of the cost of his brown hoody went to help re-plant trees. His hiking boots were expensive – a brand name made famous for withstanding time in the wilderness. He drinks bold coffee in his own eco-friendly cup.
She is wearing the required standard white on top, black on bottom, with black shoes. The green apron is freshly untied and adorned the hook for 14 more minutes. She’ll have a grande earl grey tea latte.
The whole world an alphabet in disjointed sequence.
Some of them will not be back. The in and out of a busy store. Whole stories noticed but not missed. Just customer counts. Just happenstance. Just like that.
Others return to fill the pages of chapter headings labelled “Regulars”. Their coffee cups are their community. What day at the office would start without a prior visit to their second family? A bad one. Here they are someone. A caramel macchiato with an early morning job. A water guy.
Some of them still have to complete their shift. They’ll be back in 8 minutes, but they won’t be here for long. They’re putting in their time. Their sass and smile is convincing, and they get the job done, but this $10 an hour crap isn’t for them. A necessary rung on the ladder to their dreams.
Stories mixed carefully with every drink. A lonely heart. A cop just off duty. A business partnership. A sales pitch. A moment’s rest before a social marathon. A new employee orientation. A thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters striving to make something beautiful.
How can I drink all the letters in my coffee cup? Surely Shakespearean sonnets must linger on my lips. Newtonian notions need notoriously slosh in my stomach. Certainly with enough trial and error something wholesome will start to brew.
Perhaps I shall be an artist. With a thousand whimsies and a heart of tortured depth, I’ll look to the world and live in bohemia. I shall mould my friendships into sculptures. Make my mentors into paintings. I shall walk with a sure step but a careless stride. I’ll seek to understand fine wines, but I’ll sip a white chocolate mocha.
Perhaps I shall be a villain. I shall contort and construe reality to fit my own fiendish design. With charismatic ease, I shall appeal to the child inside those with power and ensure my future. Those who have wronged me will in turn know suffering double fold. Those who have supported me will be betrayed without thought as it comes to suit. My conscience will remain unharmed, for it is egocentric. I’ll take a discount with my espresso.
Perhaps I shall be an instrument of faith. I’ll see the world as a series of supernatural intents with a spiritual connection. Suffering, mistakes, triumphs, and joys would all have their rightful place in Purpose. I could give up entirely, and let the universe carry me over rapids and down waterfalls, knowing I would wash up on the shores of my rightful Eden. I could trust that nothing was wasted, and preach that nothing was in vain. Unbeknownst to me, I was led through mochas and espressos only so I could truly appreciate the cappuccino.
I’m just a monkey. Start another drink.
The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
asdfghjkl
zxcvbnm
She wears black tights and a decent black skirt. Her shoes are heels, clicking angrily across the coffee shop floor. A jacket conceals the rest of her dress and mirrors the sound of her feet. She orders a grande soy americano misto.
His hair is carefully gelled into a particular mess. His earring studs display his casual acceptance of adventure. His t-shirt is oversized and hides the fact that his jeans are worn well below his waist. His belt, a gaudy shining thing, has only aesthetic purpose. He grabs a venti chocolate chip frappe.
Her purse announces confidently that she knows Prada personally. Her makeup declares the claim dubious. All her clothes are new, but none of them fit. Her smile is worn like everything else – an expensive cover-up. She purchases a tall skinny vanilla latte.
He wears a long trench coat to conceal the pot-belly of his age. A tie and today’s newspaper are in place to distract attention from his form to his profession. He wears his heart on his sleeve when the barista smiles at him. She reminds him of his daughter. He pays for a grande americano.
He has a dirty backpack over his shoulder and his bike helmet in his hand. All of his clothes were made in Canada. 10% of the cost of his brown hoody went to help re-plant trees. His hiking boots were expensive – a brand name made famous for withstanding time in the wilderness. He drinks bold coffee in his own eco-friendly cup.
She is wearing the required standard white on top, black on bottom, with black shoes. The green apron is freshly untied and adorned the hook for 14 more minutes. She’ll have a grande earl grey tea latte.
The whole world an alphabet in disjointed sequence.
Some of them will not be back. The in and out of a busy store. Whole stories noticed but not missed. Just customer counts. Just happenstance. Just like that.
Others return to fill the pages of chapter headings labelled “Regulars”. Their coffee cups are their community. What day at the office would start without a prior visit to their second family? A bad one. Here they are someone. A caramel macchiato with an early morning job. A water guy.
Some of them still have to complete their shift. They’ll be back in 8 minutes, but they won’t be here for long. They’re putting in their time. Their sass and smile is convincing, and they get the job done, but this $10 an hour crap isn’t for them. A necessary rung on the ladder to their dreams.
Stories mixed carefully with every drink. A lonely heart. A cop just off duty. A business partnership. A sales pitch. A moment’s rest before a social marathon. A new employee orientation. A thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters striving to make something beautiful.
How can I drink all the letters in my coffee cup? Surely Shakespearean sonnets must linger on my lips. Newtonian notions need notoriously slosh in my stomach. Certainly with enough trial and error something wholesome will start to brew.
Perhaps I shall be an artist. With a thousand whimsies and a heart of tortured depth, I’ll look to the world and live in bohemia. I shall mould my friendships into sculptures. Make my mentors into paintings. I shall walk with a sure step but a careless stride. I’ll seek to understand fine wines, but I’ll sip a white chocolate mocha.
Perhaps I shall be a villain. I shall contort and construe reality to fit my own fiendish design. With charismatic ease, I shall appeal to the child inside those with power and ensure my future. Those who have wronged me will in turn know suffering double fold. Those who have supported me will be betrayed without thought as it comes to suit. My conscience will remain unharmed, for it is egocentric. I’ll take a discount with my espresso.
Perhaps I shall be an instrument of faith. I’ll see the world as a series of supernatural intents with a spiritual connection. Suffering, mistakes, triumphs, and joys would all have their rightful place in Purpose. I could give up entirely, and let the universe carry me over rapids and down waterfalls, knowing I would wash up on the shores of my rightful Eden. I could trust that nothing was wasted, and preach that nothing was in vain. Unbeknownst to me, I was led through mochas and espressos only so I could truly appreciate the cappuccino.
I’m just a monkey. Start another drink.
The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
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