Le Town Empire

Every human being who happens to be passing by my line of vision from this window, does so promptly and with vigor - a panicked, get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here haste - always, the same miserable expression of anxiety and defeat visible in their eyes, which I imagine to be a deep-seeded unconscious natural reaction to the sudden finding of one's self in the dead center, surrounded by poverty, beggars, addicts, bag ladies, homelessness, hunger, and despair. To every last one of these terrified and depraved individuals, I'm sending telepathically the word to cheer the fuck up... We're alright here, so what's your problem? Hoping, always hoping that one of them, of the hundreds, the thousands, will at great length, at my signal, crack a smile. A smirk, a grimace, anything. Anything to signify that all is not in vain. That at the crest of the most unfortunate, unfair, beaten, deprived, suffering, helplessness, in the midst of it all, there is still always the same underlying connection between all living things which allows us to smile. But nothing... All is in vain, because there is this connection between people. But it is the link which makes all politicians power-hungry lying bastards, and all activists self-righteous hypocrites. It is the connection which makes all shop-keepers bald men with thick-rimmed glasses and several social anxieties and neuroses, all bartenders jack-offs, all drug-users worshippers of Che Guevara and Hunter Thompson, all students pretentious assholes, all thieves saints, all madmen genius, all criminals martyrs. Martyrs to a cause which they cannot yet even begin to imagine, but nonetheless it is a cause to which they are devoted, to the death, and the cause is growing. It is the self-same connection which makes all passers-by to the projects walk at a nervously doubled pace and always with the same miserable fucking frown. They do not smile. I am on the outside of this link. I cannot honestly communicate with these people, without receiving a knotted brow in response, a look like "man, you must be crazy!", or a straight-out "fuck you". I'm a freak of nature because I am smiling. Always smiling. Because there is never a lack of reasons to smile, and because everything is a source of joyous excitation, and in the end, isn't everything hilarious? And there is always cause to dance… I'm obnoxiously happy… I've given up my telepathic efforts, for now. I've been chain smoking, and drinking black coffee, and listening to old blues records, now for two hours, making everything a dance. Loki's records, you understand - Loki's original pressing, mint condition, can't believe how much he fucking paid for 'em, earl-50’s blues records that he keeps permanently sealed and never touches and never plays because in his mind they're still in mint condition and someday he'll sell them and that's his retirement plan, records - those records. I do this, every time he's away… I've got a good life-high on now but I'm out of cigarettes and there's a powerful hunger in my belly, so I reseal the vinyls and head out to the streets... The streets - the beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, marvelous, paved-with-gold streets. The Concrete Jungle, the City - it's like a man-made Eden. Which makes it even better than the original because God is dead, anyway, and this is a symbol of what man can really do if he absolutely must, and if everyone could just stop and take a look around, once in a while, they'd see what incredible feats we're really able to reach, but they can't, unless they're a tourist, so I have to do it for them - for the rest of them who go on like business as usual except nothing in this crazy Dead-God forsaken world can rightly be called usual, but I do it anyway. I marvel at the beauty of our own creations. And as I'm walking outward to the corner of Yonge and Bloor St. E., I catch sight of an old wino puking in an old alleyway and I say good morning and I think to myself "I feel like having falafel, today…" and keep on walking.