Gaia's Tears

III

Grid-Iron Sanity

“I tug at the strings of my being with teeth made of engines.”

Downtown now: more rain and more traffic. Here are dirty alleyways and gutters and garbage and construction. More like destruction. The city is in a prolonged state of slow decay, rotting from the inside out like so many of its cancer-stricken residents. Here, muddy rainwater collects into pools of stagnant fermentation, laced with all of the usual plastic disposables. In the night, rain takes on a more active tone, one that teases activity when there is none.

Perfect spiral. Water beads are ejected through something called centrifugal force; here slicing through the raindrops like a bullet through so much tender flesh. Even the steady downpour is no match for the ferocious din of the power generator, the air conditioner, the internal combustion engine. Here trees have been replaced by skyscrapers, the birds with two-door compacts, the mallards with jawing miscreants, scuttling now this way, now that.

Near the hospital now: here is better lighting. No longer will night blindness be any excuse for a fumble. Now strolling: embracing the shower, pondering the architecture, stumbling along the broken pavement and water-laden pits of gravel.

Stop.

This small alleyway provides momentary shelter from the wind. An old apartment complex contains this makeshift courtyard, completed with metal walkways and empty laundry lines hanging out of the third floor windows. A single halogen lamp dictates the aesthetic here: long shadows and pools of water reflect some unidentifiable nobility hidden inside this narrow, forgettable place.

Perhaps theft has occurred, or something has been murdered-- a light, a feeling, a place in time. With the presence of so many unfiltered eyes, true beauty is an empty cause, a romanticist's wet dream. It goes back to the rules of observation: when something is observed it is consequently altered, hence, no objective reality can exist. That is to say, because of us, because of you, because of me, our dreams will never come true. We can hold a candle up at the height of a thunderstorm, but it will always be extinguished. The follies of materialism.

The courtyard is left behind in its secret appeal. Back on the street now, under a canopy of hundred year old elms, cemented and without honor, here in the bowels of the city. Here are coaches, parked for the night; silent giants garnering mysterious intrigue lay as dormant shells for their many passengers from the rain. Running along the hard, white plastic side panel is a splatter of stark red. It drips the malignant menace of horror down into the rain-washed gutter. Tonight, the rain aids murder.

A multi-layered parking garage: open-roofed, inviting, lascivious to the observer. Up another slippery metal stairway. Small, artificial rivulets of water draining at odd angles along the sloped surface. The view is much better up here, if only for a short time. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak.

Rest.

A subtle flight of concrete steps leads back to the Asphalt Earth. It is the entrance to a parking garage, here at the back of the Employment Office, 1911 Broad Street South. The scene is tense, filled with electricity in a literal sense: painted white cables snake at right angles like metallic vines carrying the energy that feeds this wasteland of cement and steel. “PUSH BUTTON TO CROSS ALLEY,” instructs a well-placed sign. The hum of artificial energy is everywhere, strobing across the body, vibrating the brain, tickling the nose.

These old shoes are starting to go.

The vantage point of a street curb is one seldom fully appreciated. Down here, things don’t seem so cut and dry: plants feverishly glisten in the breeze and collect raindrops on their tiny leaves. Up through pavement sprouts nature, persevering, even here in the belly of the beast. This nettle plant maintains an ardent and altogether defiant disposition, and with good cause. For Earth, man is but a moment, only a whisper amongst the deafening cacophony of time. Very soon now, these nettles will line the intersections, these metal cables will be replaced with organic vines, these fabricated dwellings swallowed up in a wave of the infinite.

How long?

The rain portends disaster, but also renewal. A weak acid, the droplets beat into the asphalt and concrete, constantly wearing away what little man has done to ensure his comfort in decadence. In the moment, subjectively, man seems to be permanent; inevitable; ultimate. It is easy to believe in such whimsical notions as Progress, Virtue, or The Will to Power. These are the illusions man suffers in the lustful, petroleum-driven chaos of urbanity. Man will continue to believe he is God as long as the Earth will tolerate his malfeasance. Truly, these are but trivialities to the boundless power contained in this single nettle plant. To be happy with this rape is to be human.

But stone crumbles and iron rots. Glass will shatter and fall.