In a creamy dreamy
world we are in an enclave, an old fashioned manufactory of sorts,
tables and benches with odd spindly looking machines and wares of
some unknowable variety scattered in rough piles here and there. No
one seems to be working, they're standing in an unkempt group
discussing something or other. So we wander on through the shop and
out a rear door onto a path, a dirt path in a neighbourhood of
dwellings, tin and tile roofs divided by narrow yards cluttered with
fences and gates and pathways between the homes. Our path is higher
than the roofs on a bit of built up dike of sorts, odd in a rather
dry region, the path as the major thoroughfare to the world at large.
We take a slight
venture through a narrow walkway between some houses, through the
open gates where cats and small dogs play with children who treat us
as part of their domain with little acknowledgement. We find our way
back to the built up path trimmed with unmown grasses, being detoured
by a myriad of fences and miscellany of no drastic significance,
finding ourselves dealing with a less than well healed individual who
would wish to trounce us of some cash for a pile of corrugated tin,
us finding a hole just large enough to squeeze through to our
freedom. We wander further along to come to a more suburban locality,
with streets wide enough for vehicles of the four wheeled sort
although there are none to be seen, and we wander along from one
intriguing district to the next, the roads becoming ever more wide to
allow for two lanes of motored four wheel vehicles although there are
none to be seen, and the homes become much more 20th
century in their construction with concrete sidewalks leading to
locked doors.
We wander on, finally
arriving at a cul-de-sac on the edge of a vast prairie, endless
fields of grasses, tousled heads to go to seed for a new generation.
We wander that cul-de-sac searching for that little home where
something of a familiar nature might impinge on our awareness, but it
is in vain. That home does not happen in this local. Into the grass
fields we wander, coming upon a set of stairs which lead to, in their
stairwell, a floor of hotel rooms, and a bellhop who turns out to be
a modest unnameable fling from our remotest past who leads us to our
room, number 306, but we are distracted by some fascinating
reflection in the window at the end of the hallway, and we gaze in
lost oblivion at the miles of grasses below, blowing in the breeze.
We venture back down
the stairway and embark on a journey to a distant city where we once
abode, in disoriented younger times when life played itself out in
episodes ill guided by hormones and insurrection. Our spirit glides
along by default, sometimes on foot, other times on a bicycle,
following the roads built by civilization often leading to impasses
in squared miles of dirt trails in bush with no thoroughfare ever
forthcoming, and back to the main arteries we must detour in this
flight across the continent.
We arrive in that
distant city through some perplexing perseverance, and ascend a
stairwell in a dormitory where we once sought escapades of
enlightenment in the unhinged past. It is with some confusion as to
which floor to venture into, the residents seeming polite enough, but
in a very different plight of consciousness than that which we
possess. We head on through a hallway and into the halls and
chambers of discourse, to be smitten by the confusion regarding
issues of religion and edification. So off into the big city we
adventure, investigating a lowly apartment complex with doors which
no longer close squarely to hide the ravages of poverty caused by
life's complexities. Our room is entranced through the rooms of
other residents who hide their modesty under quilts and ragged
blankets and who try in vain to ignore our passage.
We morph along, out
into the squalor and five way intersections of convoluted traffic
snarls, who shielded in their motor cars in their journeys between
work and play, bypass the scumbaggy downtown folk. Weaving through
the cluttered sidewalks we hit upon the loneliest drag imaginable, a
decrepit nauseating stretch of filth enlivened by dark and foul
smelling doorways with the odd lurking character. We enter one, an
oriental couple's eatery of sorts within which we have never seen
another customer, and they emerge from their rear dwellings to fry up
hamburger on toasted bun with few fixings. Next, into a hotel we
navigate, a hostel with interior balconies reeking of stale spilt and
regurgitated liquors of unknown qualities. We take a room, paid in
advance by ill gained credit and enter the elevator. The door opens
to a spacious conclave, with college students between classes
enjoying the freedoms of expression lounging in brightly coloured
chairs.
We walk the long
hallway to the far end where a set of wide stairs takes us down to
the entrance, a confusing revolving door with mirrors in place of
clear pains within and without and by the time we navigate our way
out the world is lost of it's purview. Onto the sidewalks we
continue, finding the rear entrance to an enticing huge underground
mall. Down the escalator we descend to pass the kiosks and thriving
stores which fulfill the dreams of the realms of ear pierced, nose
pierced, belly button pierced, tattooed from head to toe, almost
stark naked with hair the colour of the rainbows on a mystical
planet, the descendants of Adam and Eve masticating on the apple of
sinful idolatrous obsessions, but jealousy gets us naught. We
continue along, the halls becoming more and more barren as we
approach offices with ten foot high clouded glass doors with embedded
black lettered signage, obscuring their secrets to the outside world.
It is here we find a
back stairwell which leads down to a tunnel, the mother of all
tunnels. It starts at roughly eight feet wide and eight feet high,
nicely tiled floor, soothing cinder block walls, park benches to rest
upon. Mile after mile it snakes along, heavy metal doors appearing
every quarter mile or so to open to another identical section. We
walk along for the better part of a day, occasionally passing a
seated stranger lost in thought and often wearing a brightly coloured
hat. A section with small venues selling trinkets and fast foods
seems not out of place as we journey on. Through another set of
steel doors and the tunnel begins to adorn itself with roughly carved
walls through clay and rock, the path becoming ever narrower strewn
with boulders and debris. The steel doors seem replaced by narrow
cavities, smallish holes in rock which one must crawl through into
the next even narrower section.
On and on we venture,
squeezing by strangers as they approach from the distance. Then
looming in the distance we begin to sense some fresh air and our
expectations heighten as we approach a circular chamber carved from
the earth, rough walls reaching stories high to the light above.
Rope ladders with rungs cut from dead boughs hang from above, never
reaching the conclave. Souls clamber up and down, some dropping to
their fate on the cold rock floor beneath. In the conclave is a
bottomless cavity to the bowels of the earth, a modern elevator
taking us down, stopping at every subterranean level, doors opening
to an ever more challenging array of pillars and beams supporting the
structures above. The elevator finally thuds to a stop on the bottom
level, seems no one has come this low in millenniums, and the door
opens to a rocky den, a steel doored crypt the subject of our
supplication. It is locked.
Mystery upon mystery,
it is now open, our crypt, the brightly lit the interior holding a
key, a gem of great significance to no one in particular. Into the
vault we climb, gem in hand and emerge from a wooden attic through a
trap door into a closet where we stealthfully make our way down a
narrow wooden staircase to the main floors of an oldish wooden
mansion where we can blend in with others, never divulging our good
fortunes.
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