Sunday, October 29, 2023

Excerpt From *The Recursive Shadow of Empire*

 II.

 

1.

 

Clare is the “rootless” “cosmopolitan” nomadic . . .

the extension à 80s Euro cocaine ennui jetset

to its Ballardian xtreme, rootless center

of a disintegrating, metamorphosizing (“corrupt” per H & N),

CULTURE.

 

In every place the nomadic “Clare” shows,

there are recognizable markers of place

smeared across the landscape

like oils with a pallet knife

 

 Clare, who “never sleeps”, is continuously falling asleep –

on trains and buses, in taxis and waiting rooms –

asleep almost as much as awake – continuously in motion,

continuously weary

 

Paris à Berlin à Lisbon

            narrow streets wind up and down,

            hillsides, stairs, levels, paths,

            lines of flight

 

Moscow by 747

            (TRANS SIBERIAN EXPRESS SUNG LI STATION)

                       

            Beijing

           

            Tokyo

                        labyrinth

                        levels 

                        arcade

line of flight, like Harry Lime in the sewers of Vienna

 

            by ship to

            ààààààà

San Francisco

            (“the biochemical event of seeing”)

 

blindness, motion, and vision. impermanence and flux.

 

2.

 

Australia

            going to that arid place at the end of the world

            “my bag? traveling separately.”

 

The Y2k of self-consumption

The horror of open space

 

                        cesura

 

terrible things have happened

happens in the worst of times

 

down into the tunnels

down

caves, canyons, valleys, mountains –

 

When we touch the earth, it will kill us.

 

Dreams and visions

Creation and theft

The unbearable sadness,

the unbearable ugliness of creation

“You can’t just decide to die.”

“I don’t decide anything. I just let it happen.”

 

 

3.

 

They have become addicted

to their catalog of images.

They wandered in and out of lost worlds –

feelings and figures emerge

from a lost past – their dreams

become black holes of isolation –

they suffered finally from a complete loss

of identity reality.

 

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