Mercurial

I live in a big city, all marble and cement and old edifices and multistoried buildings. There is almost no history left in the little corners that comprise this assemblage of human desires, yet of course it exists, it is there if you look closely enough to perceive the styles superposed one on top of the other, the multitude of materials, the buildings within buildings, surrounding them like geological accretions, like immense inorganic boas devouring smaller, unimportant buildings in this impossible maze. You can find it whenever there is roadwork of any kind, deep digging revealing a new line, an old wire left behind, the crystallized rests of a burned church, the skeletal remains of a railway system, the odd corpse complete with ancient DNA and forensic explanations. The city in itself, mute, is a museum of incredible proportions, where research is only done occasionally by a bunch of distracted reporters and commers competing for something new and exciting.

The city is as well an emotional state, the result of broadcasters intentionally or unintentionally polling the mood of the inhabitants and tourists, and then coming back to us, not precisely telling us whether we should be feeling right or wrong, exhilarated, elated or murderous. Sometimes it works, you know, we actually feel like murdering, or dancing, or having sex in our prescribed socially approved roles and customs. The city decrees our desires and repulsions, and one fad quickly becomes an undesirable trait. You survive only by taking on just a few of them, not committing to any of the possibilities. You like coffee? It kills you. Painting your face? Mocking primitive cultures. Body expression becomes regression to preverbal times. The city balances itself thus, in this highly bipolar dance of fashion, testing possibilities and keeping busy the flea markets and antique sellers.

The city is also a gigantic rehab clinic where everybody is continuously falling off the wagon, a trail of bodies with failed intentions as long as the years, and new addictions surging up with generosity: every thought laden with anger engenders a possible tranquilizers, every sad one requires stimulants, and meanwhile our precious time and income evaporates following the trail of consciousness that our desires leave in the counter of the local clinic, just before being declared incompetent. No wonder, then, that the most respected professions are medicine and law.

Cittites are not all that misfunctional, some of them are even my friends. You can always see them coming your way, brandishing their electronic iron weapons, calling for connectivity, invading your spectrum-space with their emissions, yells, grunts, moans, one-sided conversations and the occasional music, all blended together outside this reality in a virtual universe that we all carry in the pockets of our fashion-shirts, our comms, touchies and sats being the only thing that makes this social cacophony even bearable, even remotely sensical.