This city is a dead city.
It used to be alive but now it is dead.
If the city were a person, I would refer to the city as a she.
For example: 'It used to be alive but now she is dead.'
Et cetera.
A dead city with living inhabitants bears a metaphorical or metaphysical resemblance to maggoted bodies; to feeding on waste.
The maggots I mean.
This city is a dead city.
A man can eat out of a garbage can and glare into the distance, aware of my thoughts.
He can and he had and these were things that actually happened.
That are actually happened.
A man with one arm jangles the coins in his pocket and spits to the left.
A wedding occurs someplace in the distance, symmetrically.
The stump of the man's other arm is soft, newborn flesh and slightly misshapen at the end.
The stump is springy and firm.
He touches me with it accidentally.
That is how I know these things.
This is the dead city.
And when he touched me, I was stunned, walking as though I were either already dad or could die at a moment's notice.
The loudspeaker of the dead city blares loudest on hot nights.
Waves crash several hundred miles in the opposite direction: invisible, landlocked city.
Leprosy crumbles like damp moss here.
She is lean and grizzled.
7/5/10
7/1/10
Virginia Woolf talks about love
...Something in the distance, there, it is an invisible and secret elation that only I could possibly know. It is illusory, perhaps. Is is, admittedly, an uncertain thing, this phantom in the distance, though there are things, certain idiosyncrasies, qualities that are apparent. Take, for instance, this unfurling motion. There, you see it. Unfurling within, internally, as though ha swell of quiet delight. Take also, for instance, its grandness. It is grand. So very grand that you could know where it is though it is impossible for you to see.
It is quite curious, I say, that we both could know this grandness, this internal fullness and secret elation. But it is, I suppose, ours to share, this inclination, though I had many selfish plans already made. I can change my plans for the opportunity to discuss this passionless attentiveness, this brad that, perhaps, connects the both of our selves in an intimate fashion.
We are, presently, sipping ice water from glasses, outdoors there, directly to the right of that irrational balloon. Look how foolish we are, sipping ice water and gazing at one another, discretely, in brief instances. That foolish lemon, wedged onto the rim of that glass. I imagine its succulence. It could be nothing except sour and bitter.
But we, the young fools, laugh to one another and press our lemons into a saucer of sugar, a shared saucer of sugar, before we dare to graze our lips clumsily and suckle graciously on these citrons. And look, dear, how we laugh again to one another at this mingling of sensations after we sip cool ice water from these glasses, whichever they are. They, these glasses, dear, are quite beautiful by any person's estimation, I believe.
I do believe that I can see in both of our faces the knowledge of this invisible thing behind us. Yes, there, just across, we say in uniform glances in that direction and, second, at one another's eyes. How selfish, to know and yet to not acknowledge it. To press mild, sugared lemons to our tongues in the cool of a summer evening. Cruel, I say, to know it there and to say nothing. To do nothing out of naivete.
Though, perhaps in my own mounting sourness, my growing antiquity, I can see it frankly and justly describe its particular prowess. This phantom thing, this inclination, needn't be hidden to me anymore.
Ah, clearly, our cheeks are blushing with some blooming heat and aridness on our tongues, as usual. How great, how blissful, to think of that glass, lemon and sugar, the cool water... to think of these things as gestures of benign refreshment. Beautiful fools, we tend to be.
I suppose it unfair to know and to hold my younger self accountable however, knowing these consequences, these things. Unfair, knowing that this invisible balloon will, invariably, rise subtly, carrying us both away with it, in a gesture now invisible to us, yes, but secretly embedded, discretion applied to the lemon, sugar to the tongue, and heat to the hot air balloon, or this strange and rushing phantom zeppelin.
It is quite curious, I say, that we both could know this grandness, this internal fullness and secret elation. But it is, I suppose, ours to share, this inclination, though I had many selfish plans already made. I can change my plans for the opportunity to discuss this passionless attentiveness, this brad that, perhaps, connects the both of our selves in an intimate fashion.
We are, presently, sipping ice water from glasses, outdoors there, directly to the right of that irrational balloon. Look how foolish we are, sipping ice water and gazing at one another, discretely, in brief instances. That foolish lemon, wedged onto the rim of that glass. I imagine its succulence. It could be nothing except sour and bitter.
But we, the young fools, laugh to one another and press our lemons into a saucer of sugar, a shared saucer of sugar, before we dare to graze our lips clumsily and suckle graciously on these citrons. And look, dear, how we laugh again to one another at this mingling of sensations after we sip cool ice water from these glasses, whichever they are. They, these glasses, dear, are quite beautiful by any person's estimation, I believe.
I do believe that I can see in both of our faces the knowledge of this invisible thing behind us. Yes, there, just across, we say in uniform glances in that direction and, second, at one another's eyes. How selfish, to know and yet to not acknowledge it. To press mild, sugared lemons to our tongues in the cool of a summer evening. Cruel, I say, to know it there and to say nothing. To do nothing out of naivete.
Though, perhaps in my own mounting sourness, my growing antiquity, I can see it frankly and justly describe its particular prowess. This phantom thing, this inclination, needn't be hidden to me anymore.
Ah, clearly, our cheeks are blushing with some blooming heat and aridness on our tongues, as usual. How great, how blissful, to think of that glass, lemon and sugar, the cool water... to think of these things as gestures of benign refreshment. Beautiful fools, we tend to be.
I suppose it unfair to know and to hold my younger self accountable however, knowing these consequences, these things. Unfair, knowing that this invisible balloon will, invariably, rise subtly, carrying us both away with it, in a gesture now invisible to us, yes, but secretly embedded, discretion applied to the lemon, sugar to the tongue, and heat to the hot air balloon, or this strange and rushing phantom zeppelin.
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