More Preachings from the Pulpit of the Profane Prophet
23/05/08 10:48
An Asian-American man in a business suit steps out in front of a moving cab, nonchalantly waving it over. The driver swerves to miss him, slams the brakes, and starts screaming abuse. The businessman violently pulls open the back door, and gets in. He shouts out directions with his arms crossed, suitcase between his legs. The driver floors the gas pedal, and sends the cab flying down 42nd Street. Welcome to The Grid!
Manhattan is an anthill, a beehive, a cloud of flies, a festering of maggots in the stomach of a carcass. Trees of stone, leaves of glass, strips of sky like the inverted net of an Indian god hunting for butterflies. The only Nature is the nature of Man, and the ocean but a far-off dream. It is all around me, isolating me, connecting me, yet I cannot hear it, I cannot see it, I cannot smell it.
All I know is the traffic of people in the architectural forest. They come out of holes in the ground, they climb down the sides of buildings, they stream past me like a fast forward slideshow of variations on the human form. They bash and scrape their wings against the walls you see and the walls you don't. They work four jobs to save up for a lesson in flying that they have not got time to take. The grid is slowly expanding and contracting with the frantic beating of their collective hearts, exposing true chaos blossoms in false order cracks.
Ever since I got off the train at Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan, I have not been able to stop walking. Even when my feet are still, my mind keeps on going. The city is all corners and no curves, and all I wanna do is see what is behind the next one - the wind, the sun, the moon, the stars? I am trapped in a maze with exits all around, and still no hope of escaping. It is a matter of will. The will to stay is the will to leave, and I possess neither of the two. I just want to be swept around like the leaves off the trees in Central Park. I want to be coated in the grease that runs the machine, I want to be struck by the lightning that sparks the fuse. A self-abducted alien on a flying island with a subway to the sea.
There is no sense for me anymore. There is just my fingers walking the keyboard. Around and around, up and down, side to side, looking for circles, finding squares. Times Square, Union Square, Any Square. It is all just a slab of concrete, chiselled in the shape of the Self. Put it behind bars, and watch it break free -
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