There's a phone around here somewhere under all this clutter,
But the sense of loss was just hyperbole... romantic, smoky, old trench coats and leather, beat up cars and jaded women, long roads with no lines to nowhere, abandoned houses with rusty signs, broken fences... and lost telephones. Dusty lanes that used to lead to healthy fields, now given over to weeds and drought. City streets which once seemed to be bustling with commerce, really just echoing nothing more than the sounds of lost children and their toys. Interstate highways with collapsed bridges, still a handy way to get to nowhere and back. Crumbling remains of machinery now used for lesser tasks, mundane chores... boat anchors... The tales of heady wealth a forgotten mythology, the stories of nightlife excitement in conflict with the plowing of rocky loves and lives from the soil of struggling left over people and their memories. The occasional outcropping of toxic DEATH where once thrived an industrial complex... Burning the memory of the candle at both ends in hopes it will still make light... The flickering firelight shining red and orange off the still standing brushed aluminum stanchions erected to make day out of night for eager shoppers and weary workers... The slow processes of salvaging minor bits of hardware that could still be somehow used, the beating of high technology back into plowshares and swords... Navigating the treacherous mountains of debris and wreckage, so much more complex than merely trying to understand Nature in her previously dangerous but less cancerous ways... Foods that somehow do not contain nutrients, shelter which is more hazardous than the elements, modes of "employment" so much less meaningful than simply tilling the soil - and also so much less useful in any honest consideration of their products. Ragged clothing remnants, woven in far off lands, of mildly irritating polymers formed from life long ago compressed beneath the earth, slick to the skin and cold in the wind, flammable and heartless. A desperate scramble amidst tumultuous wealth, and yet still for little more than mere survival - perhaps even less - less, eating but not fed, clothed but not warm, active but not occupied, busy but not living. And with no more genuine security than farmers who have their seed grain and pregnant cattle to keep alive the hope and promise of the coming spring throughout the winter... A chronic weather report of heat and of cold, neither bringing relief or joy, clouds of despair and a scorching sun alternating in their mockery of a temple raised to the pursuits of riches far beyond any necessity... in which we still listen to priests incanting in unknown tongues, we must still live prostrate lest we violate any mysterious commandments, we still have foolish faith that our fears will be salved someday soon. We will surely give forth to a generation for which habitually burying its children will be more commonplace than planting its crops. 8/18/01 4 AM 
© Huw Powell
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