Fall-Apart-Park (volume edition role-out 2)
1.
The two doors -monstrous- creak, crack, crunch, and moan: open.
Step over the threshold -accept this City- cast foot upon this promenade; come along this causeway . . .
Naturally: Welcome!
Through the doors. Within now. The entrance platform -hillocky as it is- provides a sweeping view of the City; inspiring at once a panoramic notion, yet perhaps more-so, a sense of vigorous density.
As the lines of perspective lace together in the distance . . . it’s this dense vigor that stuns: for this City is alive. Its verdurous pulse beats upon its sleeve. Its every inhalation, every exhalation a ripple sent through these weedy streets.
What is this pulse? What are these beats? What breath?
This City -this place- it is green. And the verdancy is exclamatory. The city is awash, aflood in green. It spills from windows -long tendrils freely creeping, and creepers splay unabated, unchained . . . it strides and dives from overhangs; it dominates balustrades, colors arches, mops rooftops; it paints chimneys leaf green, terraces sweet green, the variety of greens is of an old forest. The City has become an old forest! The City’s cape is a green cape athrive with life: thick leaf aripple beat and breathe.
The cityscape is a mad-artist’s palette slung upon the canvas, a palette of earthly greens, a range of riotous greens. The greenery, it is the City’s skin.
What’s more: the expression and the voice. For if once, indeed, there was a time when the City’s voice was that of automobile, superfluous static, that of the hectic, the hindrance, the daily-grind . . . jingle jangle, discordance and shit . . . then now: it is a cricket; it is a wide moon; the wind flows cleanly along your soft leaf wall; your voice is probiotic.
And lo! for all the green, the grey; the City, is a skeleton now. The original City bides; eking out its existence, taut to remember, straining to remain. The skeleton is all but absorbed; all but consumed.
To see you thus! Battle-bathed in green-blood, your exterior rotting -seized and colonized even! Your serenity ridiculed: where are your spick n’span, polished offices now? Your flawless heights? Where are your civilized trimmings now? Tarnished, sullied, dishonored.
With each spat of bird shit on each front-desk, with each weed or rose risen in each street-crack, each broken window . . . with every resident deer, fox, varmint, busted water-pipe, sun-bleached alleyway . . . with each threatening seed aloft, the City shrinks.
You are dying. Your buildings, skyscrapers, your alleyways and residential blocks, they are starving and they are dying. They cringe and cower . . .
But oh -and ah- what is a healthy body without a skeleton? And this, this -you City- must understand: this is your destiny, your fate. Embrace this: bow to your new, green existence; submit, surrender to your new master; for you have been dethroned.
And it is here -where the City will not accept reality, yet the scene screams of it- here is where the beauty lies. Here is the arresting dynamic. With only teeth and the bones left, the City fragmented, the scales have turned and your disfigurement is just delightful. Misshapen, you are elegant, engaging, and magnificent once again. Revel in your revolution. You are cleansed . . . crisp, raw, innovative, and again drop-dead interesting . . . you are reborn.
Yet no. Or, rather, sort of. Yes, you are reborn . . . Sure. But . . .
Is it ever simple? Could it ever be? No. All is not obvious. No, not straightforward. Because: what are you without us? Without human beings, what can you be? Nothing more than a ghost-town, time’s testament; an experiment; a dead thing under a microscope. Sterile, objective, and dull . . . For it is the dynamic, the tension, the combo; praise the strife, the contrast, the human condition, for it is what is interesting.
And so to gush of the green-scene, to dilly amongst this cultural psychedelia and dally amidst its debris, speaks only the obvious of Fall-Apart-Park, the surface-layer. Ahhh, to be sure, the feralized city is innately interesting (to some). What beauty does lie therein . . . But sprinkle the people, along with their values, customs, cash, and system, and look: fascinating as magic . . .
And so, Fall Apart Park is not just a City revolutionized, an urban setting with a post-modern paint-job, nor hippy’d, no. This City is not Mickey Mouse. This City is Fall Apart Park. Welcome.
Enter this City- cast foot upon this promenade, this causeway. Yes. Within the double-doors, weave with the entryway.
The single entrance artery -the main, and only vein- appears a raised platform. The pathway shallowly, gentles -ease by soft ease- down, down down, to the City below.
3.
Three backpacked explorers pass, heading for the exit, nearly out now . . .
“Can you believe that?!” He wipes his beady brow and with it his worry.
His companions prop a silent, speechlessness; their silence saying more of the situation than words could suggest . . .
Then, again the leftmost lets out: “Jesus.”
Subsequently: “I don’t believe it. How did they ever pull that off?”
He who said that, peels-off the group to rest and sigh upon a bench. The other two half-notice, half-stop; stop, then retrace the few steps to plunk down too.
“I mean . . .” eyebrows draw. An exhale, then: “. . . I knew it was a . . . social-commentary . . . or whatever . . . environmental degradation . . . economic collapse . . . but shit . . .” says the middle of the seated three.
The fellow on his left -arm slung about the back of the bench: head drooped towards the gritty ground: all pebbly: scattered babble-some by so many shoes- opens his mouth: “ . . . . . ” He shuts it.
He opens it again:
“Mmmm . . .” thinking, breaking-off yet again, lost for words, head still acloud.
“Hmmm,” she on the right finishes for the cat-tongued.
With something between broken and slurred speech, he aims again:
“Well, well . . . Well?”
“The reality is . . . it’s downright disgusting.” This is the left-most of the three.
“Wait.” This is the girl speaking again. “So: it’s Fall Apart Park, right? ‘Come and see the collapse.’ Okay. But what kind of collapse?
Social . . . Structural . . .”
“And Environmental,” adds the middle.
“Don’t forget emotional,” mewls the left-most, face all melty in hands so shaky.
“Right,” she continues. “Three: Social, Structural, and Environmental; emotional and economic can fall under the umbrella of Social. The Park is divided into three. So you are talking about . . . social collapse when you say its disgusting? What people can do to each other under stress? What happens when comfort and stability are removed?”
“I guess.”
“I guess?” She scoffs. “But what do you mean by disgusting? Like it’s bothersome to you? Like: Emotionally, personally? Or: that it is disturbing and wrong, period.”
“ . . . I, uh . . . I don’t really know . . . what you just said . . .”
“What’s disgusting?”
By now the middle of the three is leaning, way back, out of crossfire, eyeing the cottony sky -momentarily calmed by its relatively cleanish powder-blue beauty . . . Only to be brought back like a whip-lash:
“What are you talking about? You saw the man on fire! You saw the pot-bellied kids, so sick, spittle and puke, begging for change! You saw the rebels and the riot! The God-Damned starving and dying!”
The cathartic expulsion wracks the middle-man with shivers, like he is sick. A little pause passes, heavy as a ton.
“It’s a reality. It happens all the time, all over the world; it’s happening right now even,” she continues.
All three sink with that, lead-bellied.
Then: “We just got closer to it today than we usually do; on our couches.”
“Or at work,” the middle adds, a bit of stability been found.
“I still think it’s disgusting . . .”
“Obviously.”
2.
Gently -ease by soft ease- wander down, down down, to the City below.
Three hunchy, buckled bodies quit the bench that sits the last overlook. After this one, a five minute walk will give the City, the Park.
The three mutter and muff their thoughts into words as they lurch past, bones barely burdening the bludgeoned brains.
Sitting here, upon this bench, eyes cast downward, the City reveals itself in full.
3.
Passing the three, shelved and benched; the entryway widens and flattens, concluding itself at Main Street. Buildings and shops slant and rest shoulder to shoulder. A real street, left to collapse, allowed to feral; encouraged to ruin. And so it is with great minimism the buildings stand.
Some structures support others like a fallen tree in the woods: caught at sharp and wild angles in the arms of another, moldering and losing itself there: becoming an urban-nurse-building; so many varieties of plant make it home. A mushroomy smell clouds about; the smell of old books, like delicious dirt hangs and murks.
Many buildings, having found no such support, met the ground. There they sit, in various stages of decomposition.
Those that stand ‘sturdy’ are active businesses, little economies in this ‘Fall Apart Park.’ The nearest sells ice-cream: Vanilla Thrilla; Chocolate-Gonna-Get-It; Cara-Meltdown; Feral Fruits; Triple-Topple.
Five ice-creams, six people . . .
A family of six, in an emotional deluge, skedaddle on all heels . . . as one they amble right . . . right . . . right, whoa . . . left. Okay, okay: left. Straight? Straight. Left. The family is amoeba, the genera human. One body doing its damnedest to stay reasonable.
The little ones try to pay attention to their ice-cream; now, seeming, somehow, so strange, so questionable.
The big one’s eyes, listing to and fro for the heads or tails of the Map in his mitts. The Map leaning at once with the great head, then against: a crate on a slippery ship-deck.
Which’s a crate? Which’s a slippery ship-deck?
Don’t ask the man with eyes like goldfish and sockets like fishbowls; he is trying to read the Map; and so, needs to get it together.
“Honey?” the kids rocket eyes at the mother, appalled, off-guard, sickened. Their ice-cream dribbles.
The ‘honey’ takes his fish off the Map, or crate, or . . . was it mutts . . . and puts them on his wife . . . he is dizzy . . . oh so dizzy . . .
His bulk is caught, braced upon the hand-rail, having been placed for such incident; on either side a dreadful slope. His fishies warble the tumble down. A dozen automobile-skeletons (sedans, buses, coupes, trucks, and motorcycles) lade the rubbly-ground to a metallic necropolis.
His head lolls back to his achey family:
“I didn’t know it would be like this . . .” he is backtracking, “I thought it would be educational.” God forbid the looks he are given be describable.
*the following are future incorporative ideas*
*********************************
A circle forms. Immediately, then, it grows. Those close enough see three people -nearly naked- awrithe upon the ground.
“Foo . . .ood . . .” one manages.
“Wat . . . ter . . .” croaks another.
The third doesn’t move; just moans sick, wretches, then, stops.
A little more crawling, a little more clawing, a little more crying . . . All the while, all is still in the circle: these spectators, relaxed; feet hardly scuffle, a hand touches a brow, a backpack hardly shuffles . . . It’s that quiet and that loud . . .
The quiet thins, chokes, collapses in an explicit heap.
The quiet dies: the circle applauds, it whistles, hollers encore. The circle stares fixedly, blankly, abstractedly. Encore.
***************
A dirty hand trembles from a nasty blanket . . . “Any change? Sir, Friend?” wobbles the childish voice.
Sonny, still awalk with his father, shoves his free hand into his pocket, eyes sad and big.
“No, no son; it’s alright, it’s all part of it.”
The blanket gasps, rasps, and quakes.
****************
A flame – in the shape of a man – as big as an adult – erupts from off the trail. A person in dreadful torment, it shrieks. At the raw shrill, sightseers draw near. Another blood-curdle pulls them yet nearer. But not so near: it is, after all, a man on fire.
The firebrand scrambles up the slope, cresting the trail, on its peak; ascream, awail, on fire.
“Help! Help me!!! Jesus Christ!”
The thing is charring, the skin crisping, crunching.
The smolder -sizzling- moves aside to allow a few wanting past; they walk by.
*********************************
Here, on Main Street, there are no windows -just a jagged outline, sharp and flagrant, mentions the original pane; paint peels in long patches, bubbling under the surface; lintels shrug; walls sag.
The concrete street seems resilient enough – it has stood most of the test of time. As have the sidewalks. Yet . . . yet, grasses and weeds find nook and cranny. Green strips sprig here and there, advancing its territory over the draconian dictator. Little battle by little battle, blade by sprout, day by day, the little delicacies keep at it, hammering away in their soft way.
Near a stripped Benz: three deer amble to a grass-patch; their thick, power necks dip and their thin lips curl back. Their square teeth tear the green tips.
“I wanta ride it!” a little shit squirts.
And his big doughy dad gurgles while he babbles: “Oh no Sonny.”
But Sonny doesn’t remember what he asked his big ol’ dad. He’s staring at other flanks now, those hypnotizing, cream-colored waxy ones sloshing under pants. Two big paws drop on the boy and boost him skyward, landing him on his dad’s shoulders. And he foots them both past the foraging deer, offering the camera to the boy.
**************
Paused on that hideous angle, it’s a ride just stepping past its threshold. It’s most common to hold one’s breath . . . Inside, it’s another reality . . . Bushes lodge at broken windows dapple light like nothing else can; this lobby is so much disconcerting light. The front desk is in pieces, covered in bird shit, and a dozen nests perch in rafters high above it. The floor above has given much away and what it has lays scattered and busted about the lobby floor.
******
Beneath this slow yet unshakable transformation; below this nature’s re-appropriation; under the growth of trees, their yogic limbs; under wood and thick thicket; under Mother Nature: under this new reality . . . debris and brickwork, plaster and masonry, glass and metal, these chaff and dreck lay undertone. Civilization, humanity -honest insignificant disregards- the ancient fact of us, our work, can be winced. Our toils and sweats, back and heart breaks, can be sniffed out. Wipe away the humus, slide aside the rich soil, and you will find it. Beneath the teeming Earth -this cauldron of power- reside our dead dreams, antiquated.
*idea*
In the distance -he without his face submerged in his hands- spots a shanty-town. Map whipped-out . . . it’s cryptic. But his head is too swollen to investigate; he can only note . . . the car-hood ceilings . . . the rammed-earth tires . . . the metal scraps set to a lean-to . . . and wonder vaguely.