The hamlets, sidewalks, and cafes of Chelsea are coated this morning. Not ensconced in buttery, vaguely sultry tones of deflated dew and mist, but draped with an unknown mundaneness. Like hiccups escaping from a filled stomach, or a thousand bumblebees rattling, the morning is unsettling. The fog holds dominion over the now languid alleyways. People walk by, free of historical delusion, and are as they are, without personages and representations. The sheen, the transitory luster that diffuses bits of afflatus through fecund air, is repressed and because of this a man’s beret is simply a beret and the curvature of his nose merely exists. He is no longer clay, his malleability stifled by the asphyxiating grip of the vortexing winds. The city is caught in a disconnect, and the simultaneous disengagement of the rooted tendons that comprise the mangled foundation of its identity has left it fleetingly gasping for definition. An eddy forms over the rusted structures, twirling the behemoths like dead leaves and raking them into a dismal, disconnected orgy. It is as though the grooves are uneven, and the needle has now stalled, playing a single note like a constant drip from an empty coffee maker.
I am trying to describe an idea in a land without ideas. There are things, yes: the lapels of a fitted jacket, the murals of cinderblock upon the buildings, and the antiqued umbrellas covering the sidewalk café. But they are just things without provenance and therefore the land is without a paradigm. Within this chaos not evil but simply flames appear inveterate because there are no binds and no straps to tie the panoply of seemingly petty occurrences into a grand tempest of vision sustained by the historical perceptions of design. Songs cannot be formed. A chord struck upon a guitar is isolated unto itself, and rests, unaffected by its predecessor, unable to affect an emotion larger than the strings which are plucked. Even here, bereft of concepts, time trudges on ineffectually in tenebrous symmetry, awaiting a break in the clouds through which false mirrors will again rain down upon a city desperately seeking an identity constructed by the tentacles of solubility.
Comments
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This is great prose, but I don't understand why it's posted on this site. Isn't this site for poetry only, and I'm not sure these two paragraphs fit the definition. Sure, it's great prose and it has some great phrases in that prose.. but I think it would be better to post this and stuff like this on fiction websites like fictionpress.com instead of here. However, I did enjoy reading it and I think you have great talent. Good luck in your future creative endeavors!
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You hit the nails on the head. This is just what it feels like walking through historic communities in today's society. The roots are damaged - provenance is only at Sotheby's for a disconnected upper class. There are no Vanderbilts or Rockefeller's to shape the landscape around the roots of production. The connections between rich, middle, working class and poor formed much of our great real estate. We can only capitalize on its remnants, now gentrified.
Today's view is full of richness and disappointment at every detail - "antiqued" umbrellas - not old or used or useful. The destruction of roots may be three-fold: authority, production and faith.
A man in a beret is just an image with no meaning - there is no struggle - infamous selfishness in a society that is already selfish - where is the friction?
Production has been replaced by renovation as the basis for community. Is this the emptiness we feel looking at buildings?
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I actually really liked your insight into this. What you suggested was not what I was intending, although when looking back I see how your ideas fit. In particular, the "three-fold" destruction of roots really struck me in quite a poignant way. One thing though, when you say faith, do you mean values or faith in a spiritual way?
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Values in a spiritual way - you sort of gave me three choices.
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I really loved the ideas presented in this story, but also found it very wordy, making it difficult to read. I really did love all of the ideas here. beautiful and haunting
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Wow
I like that a lot, but the place yuo described seems very... bland. Worse than bland, actually. You did a very very good job making that place seem like a nothingness.
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