WALKING & walking
Spent the day walking. I mean really walking miles and miles trying to hitch a ride but only getting one the whole day walking through construction builders of the new highway ramps. Rock pits prowled by diesel dinosaurs and other monsters, dust grinding down of stone into sand, drills, blasts blades – split the mountain newly exposed rock shining like a wet open wound splintered with bones of uprooted trees smashed life fading into a browner than any autumn leaves all the more shocking when contrasted by the reaming full green surviving foliage. I am a soldier through a forgotten battlefield strong metallic sunlight soldier shelled and shocked turning back with death up in my eyes among the rubble of mountain amidst the slaughter of homeland. My eyes full of death find no place to rest – all is covered with impersonal debris cans glass papers stones dust a never ending dust billows like smoke. I am the soldier walking amidst destruction of a mountain where once as a child I played, where once I loved where now feeling totally sub-human I walk with no place to rest my death filled eyes, no soft place to rest my tender tender eyes. Here on the battlefield of creation – what you have destroyed and what you’ll create is it worth your creating this destruction of beauty?
I am walking today up the hill straight through the activity of destruction and re directing of cars as they try to get through past the two constantly bored occasionally exasperated traffic cops, towards the top where construction has not yet taken place and the ragged skeletons of doomed houses the empty framework of American families bought out for love of money and no choice. Some are already gone only a few concrete steps, a bit of crumbled wall… An emptiness of places once loved and lived in by plain human beings –was that taken into consideration when the state exercised its right to dominate? Stones that someone painted along the wall tops, the tree house in the back yard, the grape vines shading the old kitchen table, the lilacs, the roses, rooms full of firsts – steps, kisses, and lasts – deaths, break ups divorce, moving was anything human taken into consideration bedsides cash market values? Cash is not human if we forget that then I didn’t know… Cash is not human, human is painted stones and tree houses, human is the best roses in the neighbourhood and those vines which for over forty years supplied that neighbourhood with string slightly bitter wine;. Those grape vines are human, these vines that are now brown brown beyond any autumn their roots like bodies reach up now as if seeking to be reunited with those amputated limbs, these vines that shall never know another harvest because the old man when forced out, knowing he couldn’t possibly take them with him decided and cut their roots off as if cutting his own arm he cut a piece of human off because cash is not human and grape vines are and human deserves a personal death a death of tears, courage and compassion not a death of cash bulldozers. I am walking and when I get to the top of the hill, a the very crest where the dust and noise are their busiest the very moment I walk over, that very footstep which puts me walking down hill at that exact point inn time there is a lull a silence like a heavy door shuts on those heavy sounds of destruction. The effect is so startling that I ‘m spun to turn around and there is nothing but the border line of a hill top separating me from the rising dust of destruction battle shell shock slaughter of a mountain.
On the other side of the door is not total silence either. The sounds of birds and barking and children getting off a school bus. I take a left get off the main road and this is a street where you can hear growing grass give way to running children. This is a neighbourhood that has seen and passed its glory, it’s the old neighbourhood, the good ol’ days, houses built like they don’t build them anymore, old ladies leaning at the front door, gaudy lace draped dull film of lace drapes across the window the newly renovated picture window from floor to ceiling that can slide open for a good old fashioned summer breeze windows, the good old new aluminium framed windows that are never opened for any breeze for fear of getting the fixtures worn. It’s just something to talk about, the new windows and how they could if we wanted, be slide open. It’s the weird scene of old peoples new items, old peoples modernised renovations, there is nothing more tacky than old peoples modernisation always so much aluminium you bet your ass they was related to Reynolds. Old peoples new things stay new too long, never any wearing away of that slick gloss film of newness. Maybe it’s because there’s no one energetic enough around to use it. Maybe after wearing themselves out to be able to afford such things they don’t have the energy to use it or the heart to allow it to be used, to let it become worn, to become less than new. Maybe amidst an aging body they don’t want to have old things around the house and prefer something new to have something that will out last them. Maybe they worked out a deal and when they die the windows , fixtures screens slides will be returned to the manufacturer and can be re sold at original prices because they’re never used and because of this they get to have it for half price as long as the merchandise is kept in pristine and for this they get something to talk about with the neighbours, something new to talk about with the new old neighbours – that guy who for fifty odd years you wanted to get something on and now you finally done it, I mean you really didn’t care about keeping up with the joneses, you’re not into that but for about fifty years you been thinking just once, wouldn’t it be nice if for just once, just for the hell of lot you’d be one up on him. Well now friend you can do it with these wonderfully aluminium floor to ceiling right in the front yard overlooking the street where every one can see ‘em sliding glass-door-picture-windows. I mean you can’t really use them you know, not unless you’re into exhibition but that’s not the thing, you don’t need ‘em to be useful, you need them to be seen. Something new to talk about besides the good old days, fucking lousy good ol’ days, more like the good ol daze at this point anyway, good for fucking nothing days except for fictional accounts made up by people who never lived ‘em and need something to distract them from their own lousy day. Poor fucking slob remember those good old days – forty years of factory labour, wars and more fucking factories until they all closed down and moved to Argentina and the union bastards got paid off and split to god knows where with the pensions covered up in a legalise language that you’re not even entitled to know. Those good old days, remember them? And remember that when you die you wont even leave behind one piece of silver or a decent stick of furniture worth the kids fighting over, not even those fucking windows that you wont slide, those big new ceiling to floor, even those will be gone resold as per agreement by the manufacturer. Those good old days and now matter how many kids you put through college, no matter how many kids you got living in Manhattan, Chicago, San Juan, Toronto, they wont even help you pay for the ride in the limo – the only ride you’ll ever get in one and even that wont be you it will be someone that would look like you if your insides were sucked out and the wrinkles stretched out and if you had any real guts you stand in front of the windows those fucking ceiling to floor sliding glass door windows with the drapes ripped down. Stand there with your back to them, preferably naked, and blow your mouth out with that Stirling/Fox double barrel then you could be in closed casket and the windows destroyed un-re-sellable and you could send the bill to New York because your insurance wont cover suicide and if you had any savings you’d a already drawn it out and given it to someone just given it to someone who was your friend like maybe Jesus. The suicide note and there should always be one should read among other things: Mark my stone with this – Here I lay victim of the good ol’ days with my fingers half the length I started with and my windows blown out.
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