There is a well-worn cobblestone road near the center of town, buffed and shined with millenia of use. It’s hard to tell these days where the seam is, where one stone stops and another starts. Even the gutters have faded without the effluent abuse; it’s as if they too aren’t sure if where the edge of the road is, if they should even both to proudly define it. The sidewalk flank that cobblestone path as if the street would wash away with out the embrace, is similarly unremarkable. In fact, where it not for the hewn texture, no one would notice ther even was a sidewalk. The demarcation, after all, had become entirely meaningless. Further out still from the strips of sandstone hue ascend two skyward slabs of granite, obstinate, orthogonal, if only to shout, “This is not my fate!” This is its fate. Layer, by layer slowly peeled backed, polished, pristine with the decades of neglect. No trace of dust, nor litter; no neon script, nor soot, nor errant chalk. No sign of creation, nor destruction, nor being.
Footsteps now; the shrill rat-tat-tat. The gossip runs down the length of the road, a telephone game with the handset unplugged, announcing to all an arrival. The rhythm draws nearer, and the road seems to as well, to restore order, put on the Sunday best. The walls stand erect with claustrophobic closeness, if only to appear for the shortest of moments to be a foundation.
The young man notices none of this. Awash in technicolor, engulfed in sickly sweet patterns and design craving hig every glance. His eyes twist themselves into complex knots – tight, tighter, and tighter still – as they struggle to grant each fantastic perversion a moment’s notice. They beg for his attention, these ghosts in the machine, howling slogans, pushing panaceas,indulgig every whim. The brain struggles to keep up, the body slavishly in tow, being conducted off-tempo and out of key. No tonic too tasteless, no ritual too rigorous. The young man is gone, given in to a world of spectres.
But for a second, the illusion fades. The young man stops. No pixy-dust pallete, just an all-encompassing grey, the man reaches out to feel these supposed virtual textures, only to feel rough-hewn reality. As quick as it vanished, reality returns, uninterrupted, chasing all thought away. Absorbed again, he continues, the scuffed sound of trumpets announcing his passage.
The young man turns the corner, never to return. The street sinks back into melancholia, never to forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment