I wanted to see you and I tried, I really did.

[Doktor Howl]

I wanted to walk to your place, but you live to far away.  I tried to drive, but the roads all loop back around and I wound up somewhere in The City, drinking cheap bourbon with an old friend in a shitty back alley bar.  I tried using a zeppelin, but the sky squids tore it in half, and I fell all the way to the Hotel Congress.

I stole an ultralight, but the wind was too strong, and I couldn't get over the mountains of woe.  I thought about a ship, but the only ship around here is an old steamer buried in the sand of the Yuma River.  The trains only go South, and they're never on time.  The airport is full of groping perverts in uniform, and skateboards only get sand in the wheel bearings.

I was going to use a helicopter, but the only ones we have out here are painted black and are flown by the Low Men who wear mirrored visors, and there's only one end to THAT ride, right?  I was going to roller skate, but the grabby-girls under the storm drains would have had me for sure.  Horses won't work, because they've all got implants that make them take you to one of the bendy places where nothing ever goes right, and mules aren't natural.

I was going to hang glide, but the man at the counter said I couldn't have a permit unless I signed in blood, and bicycles' spokes make that noise that attracts the upside down people.  All terrain vehicles are made to turn over in the canyons, too, so they're no good.

I wanted to come see you, but I can't.  There's no way out and all the doors on the end only have brick walls behind them.  There's no way out.  I'm stuck here, and you're there, and the men who wear raincoats in the sunlight follow me around to make sure I don't think of something new.

I'm in The City, all alone with these monsters.

Okay for  now,
Dok

[Luna]

Chills, Dok. Chills up my spine.

[Phox]

It's never enough. No matter what you do, or where you run, you can't get far enough away. You'll always go back.

Is it because you can't get out? The City itself pulls you back in and holds you tight. You want to laugh and scream and cry all at the same time, but you can't because the City is holding you so tight that you can't even breathe...

Is it because the Spiders are holding you? Whispering in your ear the little banalities and contradictions, complacencies and platitudes, that you think make the most sense at the time, telling you that you can't get out, and shouldn't bother. Have a pill and watch TV instead. It's not like you can change anything anyway....

Or is it something else?

Could it be that... no, of course not....

Can it?

Is it you? Are you the one telling yourself you can never get out and should never try? Pulling yourself back in and holding your breath to keep from breaking down? Is it a result of the pills, or are they just the placebo you use to justify it all?

Maybe there isn't an answer, maybe there isn't any hope.... Maybe, just maybe, we all have the keys to our own cells, and we dare not break out....

Love and kisses,
Doktor Phox

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

 

That was really disturbing!

[Doktor Howl]

I CAN HEAR THE BRIDGES SINGING FROM WAY THE FUCK DOWN HERE!

They sing that - if you just do what they tell you - you can rest.  You can relax.  You can forget all the hassles.  But our bridges don't sing...They just sort of sag over the dry riverbeds with the crumbling remains of boats half-buried in the sand.  They don't tell you anything about relaxing.  They just tell you that thou, too, art dust.  That in 50 years, someone will be looking at the things YOU used to do, the same way we look at the smiling people on 1950s reruns.

I want bridges that sing to me.  I want to beat my fists on the steering wheel, in time with their song, as I race headlong into The Future that they promise me.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The bridges sing loudest when it rains. When it's gray and all the colors stand out more vividly than they do in sunshine, the mist drifting listlessly in slow waves across the river. The rain here is almost always listless, like it's bored, like it can barely bring itself to fall to earth. It just doesn't know why it bothers.

We had the first rain of the season yesterday, just a light rain, and the bridges started humming in anticipation.

[Doktor Howl]

The bridges sing loudest when it rains. When it's gray and all the colors stand out more vividly than they do in sunshine, the mist drifting listlessly in slow waves across the river. The rain here is almost always listless, like it's bored, like it can barely bring itself to fall to earth. It just doesn't know why it bothers.

We had the first rain of the season yesterday, just a light rain, and the bridges started humming in anticipation.

When it rains here, the bridges roar, the insane floodwaters passing underneath, carrying stumps and boulders and housepets and homeless people two feet below the wheels on your car.  If you look really closely, you can see The City in microcosm...Open violence, filth, noise, and horrible things below the surface.  And if you inhale, you die.

And when the rains are gone, The City is not clean.  It is covered in a patina of dried silt, and the now-empty rivers are scoured bare, with vaguely-shaped things festering between rocks...Things that might be what a human looks like, if a human had been scraped across a stone riverbed for 5 miles or so.  And then the sun bakes it all into powder, and we crawl across the desert floor for months, waiting for the rains to come again.

I do love my City.  And I wouldn't leave, even if the sideways guys would let me.  Not ever...Because The City loves me, too. 

It loves me forever, and it only hurts me because it cares.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The bridges sing loudest when it rains. When it's gray and all the colors stand out more vividly than they do in sunshine, the mist drifting listlessly in slow waves across the river. The rain here is almost always listless, like it's bored, like it can barely bring itself to fall to earth. It just doesn't know why it bothers.

We had the first rain of the season yesterday, just a light rain, and the bridges started humming in anticipation.

When it rains here, the bridges roar, the insane floodwaters passing underneath, carrying stumps and boulders and housepets and homeless people two feet below the wheels on your car.  If you look really closely, you can see The City in microcosm...Open violence, filth, noise, and horrible things below the surface.  And if you inhale, you die.

And when the rains are gone, The City is not clean.  It is covered in a patina of dried silt, and the now-empty rivers are scoured bare, with vaguely-shaped things festering between rocks...Things that might be what a human looks like, if a human had been scraped across a stone riverbed for 5 miles or so.  And then the sun bakes it all into powder, and we crawl across the desert floor for months, waiting for the rains to come again.

I do love my City.  And I wouldn't leave, even if the sideways guys would let me.  Not ever...Because The City loves me, too. 

It loves me forever, and it only hurts me because it cares.

[Juana]

Wow, that's some haunting imagery, guys. Especially the bridges/rain and the things festering on the river bottom.

[Doktor Howl]

Wow, that's some haunting imagery, guys. Especially the bridges/rain and the things festering on the river bottom.

Art imitates life.   

[Juana]