When I Look At All Of The Old Faces

4.19.09

When I look at all the old faces, I can't fathom the names behind them were once associated with youth and seemingly endless vitality. I saw an old woman downtown in my rearview mirror while parked on the side of the street. She was gripping her walker like the death rungs, all alone under the tall, concrete towers, no one else around her. With the pale sunlight over the strange city, I couldn't conceive of what it felt like to be her, to be the nameless, very nearly faceless entitiy woven into this story. What is it like to her to look back at a life forgotten by the new order, under inches of toxic dust, and all the careless landlords who have perished so gallantly. It certainly is not my story, the story of time and maybe even the story of destruction. As I reached for the ignition, or the revolver, whichever was nearer, the church bells began to thunder. I sped off under the darkening sky; this IS our time--but time stops for no one and no one stops for us. Let's run and frollick in fear through the evening glaze, belting out a dawn chorus for the ages, we can still shift the winds, the power lies within our gaze, even the weak know that. So the stories will be written. Over and over. Things will be said millions of times before they are abandonded by their mad creators. I will pen over empty white pages as long as my mind can fathom the absence of understanding, transcend the order of the era and speed toward the takeoff with all parts intact,a sense of ease, while my luggage blows out the bottom of this, this grand proverbial aircraft. You look down on it all, the layout of the land, the movement of the cars and life until it all becomes so distant and obscured, it only survives in your mind, along with all of the stories you have of it. And you end your stories with a single image of a standing stone, don't you? Like it's all that has ever mattered, like it's all you have ever known.