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Monoliths In The Mist
The distant buildings are monoliths in the mist. They are hollow stone nests containing life. Having not seen trees and mountains for a long long time, I'm looking for nature in the layers of the buildings in front of buildings like decks of cards. I shut the city out. I try to block it out by closing the windows and blinds in the room, so that there could be a forest out there. I want the city when I want it. When it smiles, winks and alters me so that I may operate within it as machinery. So that I think it. I couldn't live in a city that invaded me through a closed window. Unless I was well above it, looking out over its years of silence and lights. Then I could tolerate it, think of it as a galaxy. Yeah I'll have that, because I can buy that. Yes I want that, I want that too. At night the moon hangs behind the buildings, like a fantastic product on a shelf a little farther into the store. The moon hangs as if it was moving behind a mountain. All we have to hang onto are buildings as mountainous landscapes, their stories upon stories within the structures like anthills and termite mounds. I wait for the fog of a late winter in New York to disappear, so that the building emerges like a range. Layers of buildings that have become the foothills of the foreground emerge. And yet more buildings as the valleys leading up into a background of buildings emerge. In New York City there are futures of buildings and Central Park is jammed in the middle, like a strip of old green turf, it resists the feet that pound upon it by remaining lush and living. Central Park is a warm plate of scented water to cleanse your facial skin or a soft cushion for your head. It is the doormat for New York City to wipe their feet upon, before entering the buildings. Central Park is their only taste of grass between their toes that made them think of far away beaches, and their only vision of sky through a moving branch. Whereas some thought the sky only existed through the gaps of buildings, or as a painted backdrop to a squirrel and a brown bird, sentience that could be trusted or admired because it wasn't human. Central Park was their only hope, and like the minds of several million people that live in this city, my mind keeps going back to that park, to hook itself in the trees. It is a park so desired that there is only enough room for a few citified squirrels in there, begging for food in the cold, or the concrete grey pigeons that often fly off, in order to navigate the buildings like mountains soaring close together. The depth and turn in their wing, and angled calculated flight with precision, is more like a child using a geometry set, than what I had imagined to be a bird flying. The weather changes in the city so that the footpath becomes sloppy. The changes that you notice are in your hair or against concrete. You notice how your tired feet slap across it in search of hopes, every block having its shops and characteristics of the block. But so far to me it all looks the same. Especially when I become homesick for Australia, and then even the moose and perfect elk wading through the winter storm look the same. Everything in North America looks flat and dull, as Australia becomes illuminous and inaccessible. Even the orange curtains of a suburban house set along the horizon of this vision, like a desert sun across a desert landscape. |
