layers

layers of new york city


there’s layers of paint on everything
in my apartment
all the beautiful tile work
painted over
why’s that?
some lazyiness
one day
just paint over it
instead of cleaning it?
looks like shit
and years and years went by
layers and layers of paint
it only occurred to me yesterday by accident when i scratched the surface
then looked at the other textures and assumed they were painted tile as well
and when i peeled back the thick paint…
there: beautiful black tile
(and above it: years of dead roach bodies)
how come the other tenants who have lived here for years and years have done nothing?
and when they “fixed up the bathroom”
they tile work they did was so shitty
overlapping terribly
so much excess grout…
why so little care?
who gives a shit where they live?
i understand they might not care about a place they’re fixing up to rent to some shmuck
(assholes, but understandable: it’s just business)
but the people who LIVE here…
why haven’t they done anything about this for years?
paint strokes… smears… globs… on the mirror, the door handle… the floor
how many decades have they been there?
(some rusted through…)
and what about the subways?
up here
layers and layers of paint
peeling
the water getting behind them
rotting the cement
beautiful mold pushing the paint up in blisters
crumbling to the floor
the pillars rotting away
decrepidness
dilapidation
as the world falls down around us
why does it matter?
we just live here..
we’re just dying here…
my client last night talked about his facination with Apocalypse
and though he agreed with me that EVERY generation for at least 2000 years have believed that the world was going to end within their lifetime
he couldn’t help believing the same
“look at the evidence… scientific… i mean: it’s really going to happen this time… people are just gonna be dropping like flies”
i can’t help but agree
but think it’s absurd too
(absurd like the perfect bear, dozerbear, posing as every fetish for his adoring fans… looking hot as fuck… but absurd beyond belief… absurd beyond belief is what keeps things going… so absurd it’s unbelievable… an act of desperation grabs to it anyway and does the dirty work of self deception)
and on the way to him on the train
talking to the guy i had dinner with last night
explaining to him something about something
derived from:
his hate and fear of organized religion
in an attempt to bring him to compassion
explaining that there is a spirituality
often experienced as a divinity
because it’s the easiest way for limited beings to imagine things: as other limited beings
(or at least icons/avatars)
but everyone having their own way of relating to that unity
creating these divinities
so organized religion (how did it get that name?)
(just looked it up: from the latin: religio(n-) ‘obligation, bond, reverence,’ perhaps based on Latin religare ‘to bind.’ )
take all these disparate views (parallax error) of the Unity
and bind them to one path
thus destroying the subtleties of so many people’s love affairs with life
and, then, controlling them
but I DO BELIEVE that this wasn’t the originating intention!
but to be able to experience the unity… together… as a people… as a community
but, the way our society seems to work ( and has for so long ):
if we can abuse and exploit a situation
LET’S SEE HOW LONG WE CAN GET AWAY WITH IT
thus our raped and ragged nation
and the state we’re all in right now
we sat in silence
i’m so good at describing these dark things
and even with the light intention of compassion
i bring it back down to a hopeless dark FACT
why is this?
there’s got to be something under it.