The Zone is a garden of skyscrapers. Every building is a model. They say that copies are exported to the North and that the garden is a model of the North that has been put here for us so we can live model lives in a model place too.
Every night I ride a glass elevator up the outside of the tallest building. I feel like I am in a spaceship. Before I got this job I had never been so high. Where I come from, the land is flat. They say we used to move to different places with the seasons. But the government put a stop to that. They say that the idea was to make each region unique.
People in the Zone come from all over. There are so many different types here. Living among them I feel free.
For the first few minutes of every elevator ride I sing to the rhythm of the floors as they fly past.
Then I stop singing to look at the galaxy spreading out below me.
When I get up so high that the fainter stars start to disappear, I remove all my clothes and press myself against the glass. I spread my legs and hold my arms out. I imagine myself the center of a universal geometry like a drawing I remember from school. I stay like that until the cold of the glass penetrates my body. Then I get dressed and wipe away my outline with Windex and paper towels.
The cameras have to see me. But no-one has ever said a thing. Maybe I am invisible.
When I arrive on my floor, I wander the identical cubes in which no-one works to see the ways in which dust has fallen from the ceiling and plan the route I will take to erase the passing of time.
4
favs |
1171 views
5 comments |
311 words
All rights reserved. |
I was reading about some of the shadow worlds contemporary capitalism has created; free trade zones, which now include model cities, and new geographies of class & invisibility.
#OWS
This story has no tags.
Your strong images and descriptive writing create a unique reading environment which is fun to navigate.
That's quite an elevator ride: "galaxy spreading out below me; fainter stars start to disappear."
The cleaning man: "to erase the passing of time." Thought provoking.
I like the cold futurusm and eloquence and loneliness in this piece. It says so much and I think I have seen pictures of that city and that no-place. Fave!
There is a lot going here, it's got good weight. I like the image of him singing to the rhythm of the floors.
thanks very much for the reads and lovely comments.
i like this piece, but i can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly...maybe the kind of total alienation or the sense of this character being complex and kind of sweet but also erased (and erasing himself) inside the class-based invisibility at the heart of the contemporary corporate utopia.
You write with such clarity. Very nicely done. *