One of these days is none these days
Reaching high Feeling low
Gilded white sparkle script on tattered black denim: 'Truly Norable'
I scan you I tease you I breathe for you
As if it crawled though traffic, beneath the parked cars and then exhausted died in the gutter at the sidewalk's edge,
The frayed man in jeans and rumpled shirt stands (in the failed shadow at the edge of the sienna tile shelter by the chipped chrome guard rail and the battered concrete path) smoking a cigarette silhouetted against the sunlit turquoise waves as the ferry rumbles in.
A sloe-backed boat, tire-rimmed, sepia at its stern, turquoise at its bow, a few red triangular pennants flapping in a grey wind, pulls away from the pier toward the channel, spewing bluff chugs of blue grey diesel smoke.
Paris Mo Amour
Suitcase (on ground, opened, surrounded by a quartet of hungry happy day-off domestics on the jam-packed pedestrian throughway) full of noodles, cooked. Broth in tupperware. Serving utensils. And a ladle moving soup to bowl, garnish added with fingernails polished: black polka dot shiny talons.
Wind-blown woman in elegant beige by a rural river holds a caramel-colored baked-good up to closed lips,
An elderly woman, skin pursed like a preserved prune, carrying two packs of golden-foiled cigarette-brand 'Good Companion', and a bundle of unbloomed tulips in transparent plastic, drops a one dollar coin in the centre of Tung Sing Road (where the battered concrete cleaves and 3 distinct slabs meet, a painted arrow flaked and scuffed, points against the direction of traffic) and she stoops. Ii I oslo
BE AS YOU WISH TO SEEM
Do Nut Panic
The white-truck holds it's black-arms in the morning-air, shaking cold-coils of pale-fat and pink-bone from the meat-packer's plastic-dumpster
The partners sit side by side in front of a tan-hued-wall. Between them is a small gold lamp, it's shade stitched with black thread. Their gaze is direct at the camera; their hands relaxed; their clothes predominantly blue. One wears a grey hat. On the table is one glass of water.
A red and white line on paved-tarmac, nudge-flecked with scuff-resin-oils, turns 60 degrees in front of a Bombardier Q400 prop-plane joined to the passenger-walkway by a puffy-inflatable that appears to devour the glistening-fuselage behind the '806' written on a missilesque-nose-cone.
PARKING FOR VIKING CUSTOMERS ONLY
chain-link-fence a weed-filled-lot a billboard-painted-all-black
Golf ball casserole: 17 golf balls, 1 is pink in a 9" glass bake pan on a kitchen counter in front of an aloe vera.
On store door Beside 'cash for gold' and 'cash for diamonds' in neon... a wrinkled handwritten sign 'I'm next poor'
Graffiti 'GAR' written in golden-pine-colored polyurethane-window-sealant on the concrete-abutment of a bridge going over a 6-lane highway.
Beside a large splash of spilled soup (several carrots, 3 pale chunks of potato and a clear broth on gleaming tiles at the entrance to a mild sloping hallway crowded with commuters), a security guard (female, protruding lip, belt pouch, and a frayed pigtail) holds a beige phablet to her right ear while diverting pedestrians around the spill (her legs braced as if surfing the soup which emerges like froth at her feet).
Billboard on beige tile in humid tunnel between escalator one and escalator two, a herd of commuters (in the din of their breath, in the ambient field of their devices, in dacron and cotton, holding hands and holding handbags, following the-curve-between-chrome-guide-rails) pass by 3 larger-than-life blonds in bra and panties on a couch partying: one pouts, one pulls at a strand of hair, one throws up her arms in jubilation. 'Get Joy! Feel the Joy!'
An inflatable turquoise octopus with black eyes, white pupils, and pink dot blush cheeks, hovering on a beige ceiling by a spiral neon light in a frosted cylindrical shade.
Under the shore lamps, the ocean licks the rocks, ceaselessly as if thirsty. Froth bursting like pleasure from its tongues.
From one narrow dark open window (which is a single grey rectangle in a large pale white wall; it's once pure young skin now glazed with pollution to beige grimy glow), a torso, female, mildly pudgy, extends her arms holding a cotton frock to dry (curled and fluctuating in the breeze three floors above a snarl of trucks, double deckers, taxis, and luxury sports coupes dawdling and lurching in a rush hour humidity snake of ramps, fly-overs and stop-lights).
Plastic fork, tongs down, on marble and tile floor of gazebo during an afternoon torrential rain when the light has merged with water.
Slivers of light synchronise in flocks leaping and falling centimetres above lightly ruffled dusk water. Rising and falling in curved quick shivers of silver. Herring? Sardines? Earlier four veiled cowled women in a small rowed skiff unfurling a fine net 20 feet from the tidal shore beat the water with tiny blunt harpoons before retrieving nets laden with fish (their tiny bodies invisible from a distance), their faces as passive as masks.
A wet shit oozes like brown batter beside an unstubbed half-smoked cigarette on the floor behind the squat toilet. Above is a latch switch (flush to the wall) seamed with yellow and black tape.
He's combing the sand under the trees. The pristine effluence of his effervescent soul Shining like bourbon burning in a glass at dusk
A refracted lens flare, violet and lime indigo, stabs off the roof of a hatchback with all its doors open, parked curbside under dusty trees which drowse above a chain link fence where wild dogs sometimes skitter and yelp in the dusk on the steep flood-managed slope, but where now in the afternoon heat, squatting on the culvert edge, the hatchback driver rests swigging off a tiny metal flask, peering thru glasses as elliptical as orbits.
A tuft of grass rising thru a seam between artificial turf.
Styrofoam crates crushed and broken into fragments and chunks from dusty dandruff spores up to 90% complete cubes with propeller gouged flanks. Chip bags, water bottles, plastic pails, nylon meshing, tin cans, takeout containers, cutlery, servers, plastic bags and paper scraps flowing in an oily glaze of fish viscera and gasoline. Smeared across the water surface like a second skin in a long snaking licorice tale after a covert ejection from some passing fishing trolley.
On the branch of an aspen tree (above the toy power-boat pond where motorized whines rip the calmness from air, above curved paths where domestic workers from Indonesia picnic on improvised blankets and cardboard scavenged from recycling dumpsters, above pruned-fertilized-pesticide-perfected ornamental shrubs, above children and strollers and senior citizens and joggers, above the birthday party for a toddler) a starving pigeon rests on a bare branch with a tattered disintegrating plastic bag shaped like a cape suspended by a handle that is twisted around its chafed neck.
Solid with frizzy hair, under the blast radiant a.c., on the muted mauve bus seats decorated with robotic politeness elves, approaching the tunnel under the harbour water, after the sun has set and the bright bus interior feels like sitting inside a brightly-lit over-chilled oven, her phone rings out with a strident peel. Extracted from clasped purse, scrutinized, flicked, stoic, paused for 500ms, 'Wei?' Then nothing the silence. An aberration. The phone put back; its lock-screen a mungy-faced-robot-made-of-lego. Purse clasps reclip.
A banner on the sidewalk of a pedestrian street: 'Stop forced live organ harvesting in China'. Next to the banner, a patient pretending to be dead on a table under a white sheet, and a doctor standing in scrubbed surgical whites with scalpel and forcep poised like a mime frozen in a pose. Everywhere: indifferent dense crowds drifting like water past kids in corporate costumes giving out coupons for discounted cellphones and anti-aging moisturizers.
A tawny-dappled-collared-cat creeps along the narrow gunwale of an ancient fishing trawler as it slowly chugs thru green-inner-harbour-water. The cat pauses (by an open door to the interior of the ship stained with fish entrails that resemble spit toothpaste) it's body (silhouetted against sunlit mist flowing through the boat ) etches a precise-indifferent-poised-caution.
Compact-beige-fuse-box with lightning-bolt-warning-sticker poking out of a lawn's-dense-green-grass in front of a bush with tiny-round-red-flowers.
Seen from behind as she stooped-over slowly strolls (pecking with each footstep) along the concrete quai between dolomite-stone and green-black plastic-flecked shore-water, a hunch-backed grey-haired (frizzy and chaotic) elderly woman in a grey-brown plaid button-up shirt, with a small brown purse perched on her sacral (its compact leather surface covered in bright aluminum zipper bangles), has twisted her double-jointed left arm back and then up so her hand rests palm-facing-out on her back between spine and shoulder-blade where her body is growing a horn of fermented bone.
A used pink bra resting on and partially in a used pink striped shopping bag beside grimy cream wall.
A tabby cat in a speckled Tibetan necklace (an arc of tiny unpolished handmade bells at the end of threads of soft burnished sandy crimson beads) sits on a small wooden table with two empty wooden chairs at each side Behind him, blurred as if in bokeh by the charisma of the cat, a cluster of office desks, a waste-basket, several computers, a filing cabinet, a baby's crib (baby inside, presumably asleep, perhaps dreaming of cats), an empty birdcage hung from the ceiling, some wicker baskets, and a few young women, quietly alert, perched before screens.
His oiled black hair combed straight back curls at the ears, above a white shirt, dark blue suit, light blue tie, around a fleshy face (competent, dour, and mildly jowled). His eyes are downcast on the MTR train heading west to Kennedy Town at 18h44 in front of the window labeled 'Multi-purpose space for passengers', while at the end of his slack swaying arms, he keeps both hands clenched into fists. He lifts the left one, eyes studying the floor, and coughs into the tight curl of its fingers, past the thumb to the index ring and an expensive watch gleaming under the mouth of a bleached cuff.
A tiny grey frog escaping head-first through a small hole in rusted metal to the fun humid heat under the house, it's hind and fore legs propped up against metal, wiggling.
Woman in striped-shorts, flip-flops, wide-brimmed-dark-sun-visor (the curved gleaming beak of a giant duck), head bowed, alone, standing in front of beach rocks and an idle sunlit seemingly-lazy surf, cleaning the paws of a tiny poodle cradled in her arms (before taking a selfie with it, crouched down, her teeth bared, ecstatic in self-possession).
A yellow leaf on a spider web rattling in the wind .
A tawny-dappled-collared-cat creeps along the narrow gunwale of an ancient fishing trawler as it slowly chugs thru green-inner-harbour-water. The cat pauses (by an open door to the interior of the ship stained with fish entrails that resemble spit toothpaste) it's body (silhouetted against sunlit mist flowing through the boat ) etches a precise-indifferent-poised-caution.
A banner on the sidewalk of a pedestrian street reads: 'Stop forced live organ harvesting in China'. Next to the banner, a patient pretending to be dead on a table under a white sheet, and a pretend doctor-mime motionless in scrubbed surgical whites with scalpel and forcep, among indifferent dense crowds drifting like water past kids in corporate costumes giving out coupons for discounted cellphones and anti-aging moisturizers.
On the branch of an aspen tree (above the toy-power-boat-pond where motorized whines rip the calmness from air, above the curved-park-paths where domestic-workers-from-Indonesia picnic on improvised blankets and cardboard from recycling dumpsters, above pruned-fertilized-pesticide-perfected-ornamental-shrubs, above children and strollers and senior citizens and joggers) a starving pigeon rests on a bare branch with a tattered disintegrating plastic bag shaped like a cape twisted around its chafed neck.
A man raises his leather shoe to the concrete retaining wall by the shrubs in front of the basketball court. He flexes toes, rubs a suit-clad calf, and exhorts the younger man in track pants at his side to stretch his glutes.
Black couch leather gleams jaundiced from the screen glow where a man with a rifle waits on a mountaintop for the girl with the kind face who moves through the rain her face sometimes hidden by hair with an umbrella shaped like a heart, and lips as devout as the plane which taxis interminably past the silhouette of a defeated romantic. Polishing the car, making the bed, sharing a glass of water, the melody rolls gently by. Vacuuming, brushing teeth, fighting, writing, segue to chorus. The story unravels in a typical cascade of dish soap and flutes beside the electronic darts.
A bulk size dental floss leaning against an almost depleted tape roll on a tile counter in a quaint gesture of competence.
POST NO BILE
... soap bubbles as large as a human body convulsing like translucent worms above a tiled wading pool streets by trees where a toy speedboat skims in shrieking circles... temporary undulating refractory luminescent magenta lime violet globules and their insistent machine companions
Tiny dead cuttlefish, one of its limp tentacles draped like a stand of well-cooked vermicelli over a spigot of threaded-metal protruding from rough-pebbled concrete.
A man in black underwear, seen inside a brightly lit ochre-colored wooden fishing-boat, seen from slightly above so that the deck of the boat decapitates him and only his torso and legs are visible, his feet also obscured by the styrofoam crate he stands in.
As the plane lands, the map shows the plane neatly in real time descending over the water to ward the runways, but it's mildly misaligned, pointed toward the terminal, touches siren with a skid on it's roof.
On-screen in the mute rushing void: “Best private play bank 2014”
A woman's body slumped asleep in pink track suit, headphones on, the headrest screen in front of her shows a hallway tracking shot, a glazed run toward a door she will never see.
White baseball cap, beige shirt, hair dryer bobbing at the wall.
Tiny pink petunia blossom on pale maroon arabesque hotel carpet.
Small heap of moderate boulders, bleached stump, beside electrical socket and double glazed door, on scuffed tile.
Socket box, blunt, grilled, scarred, lower than ankle level, on barn board wall, an eel of wire, all scuffed.
NO ANIMALS BEYOND HIS POINT
Red plastic letters on mirror glass.
LOOKING FOR A DOG TO BE IN A FILM PAY: $100
PLEASE OPEN OTHER OOR FIRST
Crossy Road 16 bit hop-hop brick-based road-river-rail ricochet-game played-on htc-one by a oi-ocha green-tea-bottle, pencil, vaporizer, and lined sheet of 11x14 blank on dark table.
Underwater pool robot, seen from 2 stories above, under 6 feet of water in the shallow end, its black cord coiled out taut over the water surface, a knot in it unravelling as the robot tentatively edges across the pool, correcting its course to follow tile lines... when a subtle wind slides over the water surface, the smooth wet image disrupts and the little yellow robot becomes a diffracted turquoise blur.
Approximately 100 smouldering cigarette butts on top of an orange metal garbage can.
A torn islet of snot, translucent forked river, on the palm of a hand, running orthogonal over the wrinkles.
Digital death Moreman editor
Plump bald man in wicker chair, asleep under a tiny tv mounted on a wall covered in grime and receipt residues.
Carrot in the gutter by the double yellow line.
Chapter Causation. Page 149. Language Change: Progress or decay? Fig. 9.1: Sketch of tongue position in the vowels [i], [e], [a], [o], [u]
Sprocketed UPS roll of address stickers on wax paper, caught unraveled in the branches of a blossoming plum tree.
The spigot mouth like a fish. The red suit tie, a tongue. The striped shirt, the belly of a fertile carp. Sunlight falling across the steering wheel thru a grimy windshield, distracted photons entering pond water.
A pugilist (thick lipped thick eyed thick necked thick limbed thick nosed) in a wide rear view mirror, scowling nowhere.
Plastic wrap on fingertip.
A white jogging shoe (bleached and destroyed by ocean waves and sun, sole ripped tongue of fibre and rubber split from cracked leather sides, laceless) on blobs of ruined soft polished styrofoam (chunked and folded, mildly jaundiced, snow-like plastic) in a fold between rocks (pink and orange boulders strewn in a tight gully where an ocean tide rushes the tightening chasm to regurgitate its refuse).
In the little white skiff just off-shore, a man in grey t-shirt paddles from mid-ship, facing backwards moving the boat toward its flat stern along a wobbly meandering path along the shore's edge water which today, windless and calm, is a serene and luminous grey like clouded aluminum foil that has been smothered in oil and smoothed. At the stern of the skiff, a man in white t-shirt hits the water with a toilet plunger: thwack thwack thwack.
After three hours in the art fair, gently drifting among cleancarefully-considered aesthetics (each booth aware of the subtle play between taste and intensity) I exit along the crowded walkway over Glouster Street, passing a beggar who sits on a thin low pillow, a cardboard box in front of his bare knees from which dangle cones of soft smooth amputations, their tips resting in curled socks on the concrete.
He is a young man in his early twenties, handsome with an alert gaze and clear quick gestures. He glances side-to-side through a forest of swiftly passing legs. His haircut is fashionable, clipped short on the sides then long-on-top a tussle falls over one eye, to dive over a high clean-shaven cheekbone and fall toward full steady lips. From his t-shirt biceps emerge; smooth well-sculpted capable hands. Few see him. None admire. No money arrives. He bounces his knees together, his bladder full, waiting, to not be forgotten, again.
Today I saw many paintings that touched me less than his situation andyet were worth far more in monetary value.
A row of bank machines opened to guts (switches, circuits, wires, belts, gears, sprockets, toggles ...) spilling onto the tiles at the feet of a tide of indifferent pedestrians. 3 employees kneel among the carnage in green uniforms, ripping up what appears to be heaps of money which they stuff into acrylic sacks.
Once-white stairwell wall, inbred and smeared with dense smog from the diesel drenched double-decker bus avenues: a wall scarred by movers, gouged by passing stuff, scribbled on by random artists, stabbed at with keys by bored workers, and bubbled by humidity so that the paint heaves, then those bubbles dried by the winter broke at their tips, their residue like shattered eggs glued into a dying frozen smoke.
Corner of a stuffed swirl chair, gnawed away by time and the persistent passage of bodies and shoulders (it sits in a narrow hall), repaired with an amalgam of brown and transparent tape.
Industrial elevator door seam, worms gouged into steel, – supple, bent fluctuating presences, migrating knots.
The cosy haven: 2 red chairs, in an old boat, 6 night travelers drowning in the light of their phones, heads bent, devout, quiet. Through all the heavy lure of low diesel motors humming micro variations.Orange life jackets overhead in green netting. An aluminum pole rising symmetrical in the centre. A towel hung from a stick, swaying.
A massive backlit billboard (spanning a 3 flight 4 lane stairway –stairs are steep, the steps narrow, there is no lift or escalator or wheelchair hoist) that shows 3 stalwart citizens (a boy, a girl, a buff young man) proud of posture, on an escalator, immobile behind a clownish man with a trophy, beneath the slogan: HOLD THE RAIL, AND STAND STILL!
[I imagine us pedestrians all poised in obedience, locked immobile on the stairs, waiting for our next instructions.]
Banana peel, used tea bag, and 6 gangs 13 Ampere Extension Socket box in garbage pail by beige wall.
Pretty low red-flowered bushes in a bed by the condo's brass-handled doors, framed by terra cotta bricks (smeared faintly in pale poodle shit). One wobbly sign poking out of the earth: WE PUT PESTICIDES HERE. STAY AWAY.
Manila envelope tongue sealed with cellophane over which in red ink is stamped: TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE ONLY slightly warped by surface, almost illegible.
White quadrocopter drone swaying above beach by a catamaran with lime sails, rigged, on the sand.
The pale yellow white polyps suspended on threads in the center of thegreen papaya have begun to sweat a glistening spunk , thousands of perspired beads passing through the engorged heads clingingin the gouged cavity now exposed to light.
Five generous seagull shits on mustard enameled plastic.
In the school auditorium, behind the unmanned check-in table for a week-end dharma lecture, on 6 folding chairs turned to face in to each other and create a platform (two on either side and one at each end) , a man in a red parka with no shoes is sleeping and occasionally wrinkling his toes, as at the front of the room close to the stage, 6 devotees meditate, their hair rising like fur baubles above the room's empty chairs.
The dark sea is made out of a mesh of trembling stars immersed in an oilywrithing night. Skinning the horizon, winds heave wounded clouds into heaps above the island flanks. The city behind us dwindles like a bone boiling in a bowl of concrete soup. In the cabin, the old blind captain clears his throat over and over as if retching god. We follow the faint light of a small boat bobbing along the low waves as we exit the harbour. A wind drives toward us, and the boat sways up and down its teeth full of froth. Rain drives from the east like pellets; and an amber glaze stains the clouds over the island’s warped spine with a musky apricot that everyone knows is polymers and particulates suspended in the moist sky. The long dense flanks of freighters obliterating the horizon, make invisible a city suspended on water, written from toil. The air freshens as we arrive at the path of lights in the bay where few live. A dog waits on the empty pier under the red light as the boat slows and its ropes grow taut.
Bones pink marrow, gristle orbit, sinew sawed off, knuckle gloss, flesh oozing bloody body fat fate. Heaped on a styrofoam plate. Cleaver shearing bone striking wood: thwack-thwack-thwack. Death stench. Bare lightbulbs swaying in a grey wind.
Door keys on ring, zap-strapped to exterior-wall plumbing-pipe, next to bus stop.
Exposed electrical box of an under-repair elevator call switch. Inside: an intestinal tongue of wires, a charcoal speckled artery, nub hubs caked in plastic, intimate corrosion fringed with unwashed stucco.
A wall covered in tape residue. Tiny glutinous irregular overlapping rectangles of rough beige yellowed glue.
Pylon. Leather chair. Rusted wall.
Brown moth, a parabola blossom fractal of diaphanous flesh, on glazed window glass.
Decrepit derrick tug boat (moored in the night harbour) garlanded with ancienttires, lit by incandescent spotlight (white sourceless glaze), wraithed in diesel fumes (undulantpale writhing mist)
Quartered orange on cutting board next to an HTC Butterfly S
Wedding photo. Bride in red brocade gown. Groom clean shaven. Crew ofwitnesses taking photos. Bridesmaid in absentia on tablet in video chat. … A child cries… The sturdy solemn civil official intones: “…which is a law… The voluntarily taking of one person…”
Double burger, 5 maraschino cherries, tea on saucer with mint leaf, sweaty apple, prickly pear, and a handful of french fries: bleached out & printed onto decaying thick plastic tablecloth held down with brightly colored tacks.
Stooped elderly white-haired woman with tattered knapsack and cane passing in front of triple-life-size glossy 6-pack abs of a featherweight boxer billboard.
SWEETY DUCK SCORN FASHION, striped pink shirt hanging in window. Mall 2F
Dwarf plum tree blossoming in a ceramic pot full of water (its trunk has been cut) next to an empty escalator framed in thick neon at the mini mall with the thundering of buses rinsing the hall of closed shops. Next to the escalator, a dystopian and bottom. Around the tree, iridescent lime octagon of modular chaired control barriers emblazoned with the words: TEMPORARY SUSPENSION FOR MAINTENANCE.
Beside the huge chandelier ( the size of a small car) on a 3 story-high scaffold in a rotund courtyard (where BMWs and Audis glide to parking slots or drop-offs past the uniformed doorman standing by the regal entrance and the servants door on the side with swipe card access) a man (in coveralls, a hard hat, safety goggles and phosphorescent orange vest) uses a hose to send spurts of water into the inverted crystal umbrella of the chandelier which dribbles onto a statue (wrapped in black garbage bags taped together into a convulsing mosaic) beside the parking attendant in his formal coat with walkie talkie.
Heavy-duty white-plastic work-glove (one finger inverted, stained with a jolt of lacquer, floating in the ocean) illuminated by the morning sun which faintly cuts the polluted mist.
Hulls of a fleet, thin sharp-bowed and intricate (coils of ropes, boxes, pulleys, hooks, winches and holds, illuminated by meagre lightbulbs on tendril threads, outlined in rough as if hacked together with axes) a hundred wooden fishing trawlers, parked in rows, moored side to side, on the black inner harbour water where mist makes air into auras.
Cellophane tape (cunning in disintegration, crushed into appalling slivers) over a vestigial ashtray in an elevator wall.
Dour door of a (sad dishwasher red) face with an infinity symbol tattooed on his forehead where the shadow from thin-rimmed spectacles (propped above his eyebrows) falls.
Blue text in bilingual Cantonese-English on scratched metal caked in pollution :
Smoking is not prohibited in this area
a disintegrating word: SAD over a black triangle stenciled on a heading duct above the place where I stand
Shellac Hand $250 Feet $400 Hand + Feet $600 24 Hours Appointment
Beside these glossy words, a laminated finger and fingernail sticking thru a pastel colored graphic of a ring. The bottom of the nail labeled with a thought bubble that says hot; the top of the nail labeled cold.
A delivery truck arrives, and, in order to receive its contents, construction workers rip away the plywood hoarding, ripping the poster in half.
Salad waffle. Different flavors available. Corned beef waffle. Tuna saladwaffle. … A muffled lump of pink and cream on top of dimpled beige.
Oversize candle at the end of its life: leaning perilously over a teak table hollowed out by flame, like a large dog's amputated orange tongue, palpitating serrated inner canyon ridges melting.
A tv set on a desk inside a sewage repair truck (fans, tools, ropes, coils), the street cordoned off around steel plates partially concealing a dug out hole in the road. Cords running into the metre diameter pipe beneath the road guide a robot which sends a bright tunnel image into the TV (radiant votive vortex of collective intestines). Beside it, a man in a green shirt and orange safety helmet chews an unlit cigarette and smiles teeth eaten away by time.
Crumpled paper, speckled grey floor, pale custard wall, empty garbage can with dapper and tidy plastic bag folded back over it's rim.
Bent dumpster, a pink rectangle blurred at the edges, spray painted over corroded blue steel where it's wobbly thick support beams bear the brunt of innumerable impacts (scratched bucked dented buffed and scraped clean down to russet grey rust scars, welted blistering weld bubbles and convoluted topologies).
On page 27, a printing anomaly: a tiny strip of paper, the width of a flattened guitar string, a few centimetres long, curved at each end, resembling faintly a bleached bacterial phage frayed at the edges, has fallen into the page, been pressed and adhered there, on a diagonal, obscuring 3 letters and clipping bowls and horns off a few others, framed in the lens, to form a cryptic passage:
A word drop l_ .e a child whe._ it rem
Rain poncho, dead and draped over a laundry basket (turquoise wicker plastic). Two 14.5L pails. Varnish buffed off a wood rail. Grimy chrome diagonal.
Someone has been shaving and smoking and leaking a fine film of hair, skin, dust and ash into the delicate porcelain curve of the urinal.
Footsteps. Written in sand: 27.01.2015
Woman in red dress painted in acrylics, mildly angular and proportional, hung on a wire fence above a transparent donation box, a dented scuffed plastic chair on the wharf and the gaunt gaze of a solitary man smoking a compound of wood chips and pesticides.
Tile wall under suspended plastic bags, grimy parched flesh of a miner, geometrically defined as squares.
The footsteps coming out of the sea suggest an apparition, a hominid in sneakers, who emerged on the sand swept clean by waves, incarnate complete without any previous trace.
In the pebbled basin yard in front of the beach house (where in the centre of a rectangular ledge the stump of a tree rises like a mute grey thumb from white stones), a few cacti heads have blown from the potted plant that vaguely withered rests nearby on the slagstone parapet. Each head over weeks and months diligently grasping and clinging to itself grains and specks of organic dust to clump around cleaved pebbles a foundation for home, from which (awake and erect seeking out the sun like grey-green starfish washed out of the sea) they pray with tiny gestures that are never seen.
Red tape on a security monitor that follows faded on-screen train tracks.
Locks, the locks that lock the pipes to the ground where they go into it.
Irregular amalgamated forms: oblong, rhomboid and cylindrical chunks of civilized trash (corner softened and casual, plastic in all its myriad configurations) carpet the ground underneath the ocean shore palm mangrove trees where they arc over the sand, their trunks like snaking hammocks, as if listening to the tides, the hum of what might come in ... who put the pink cushion into the cradle nub of one trunk, among branches covered in soft nubbled thorns to listen to the silent atrocity accumulating here?
On the almost empty ferry at 10:50pm, a woman has taken off her shoes, put her legs on the wooden bench and laid her head in the lap of her husband who softly caresses his black phone, a white cord running to his earbuds. The lights of the amber city sway like faded stars through the pollution on plexiglass windows. At the front, alone in the little incongruous soft red sofa chairs that someone must have been throwing out that got adopted long ago, a single man sits staring at the fire extinguishers, plastic pales, styrofoam boxes, and drying towels that hang behind the bow's dark polished wood enclave. Empty as the night through which it travels, dark harbor water eaten by its throbbing propellers, the boat moans with a functional grace. The cabin is quiet and wordless, there is only one more person, on the other side of the empty bench in the middle of the boat, also asleep in a dotted hoodie, the bottom of her pants buttoned with huge black plastic discs. The solitary man gets up and paces the cabin, he rounds the corner bench skipping delicately as if in a tiny unsurpassed dance.
A hand reaching from behind a sequined curtain adjusting the position of a tawny leather boot.
Young neat human in all blue (shirt, shorts, socks and shoes) in front of a dented cream corrugated tin wall, crouching over with a propane torch lit scorching violet orange dragon tongue flames on the grasses growing in cracks from the concrete smouldering brown within its coherent passage.
Frayed shopping cart handle, disintegrated due to touch: ease eturn your trolle
Little girl (with a bark-bald stick dangling from an indifferent grip, crouching down to pick up a stone from a clearing in a deserted park) in purple plaid vinyl winter coat, creamy tights, glossy pigtails and oversize unlaced pink high-top sneakers.
Molten charred ruby red wax candle residue melted and solidified into ripe polyps and dollop slop among scuffed desiccated grass under a picnic table.
Houdini shed. An outhouse-size shed buried to its knees in gravel and rubble. A rusted chain encircles a misaligned metal door padlocked to a frame that long ago dissolved or simply rotted away. A few weathered wobbly punky plank walls, a tin roof peeled in casual tatters so one can peer in where a vine running up from outer wall to inner absent roof sends a barricaded shadow onto an outboard motor among gnarled weeds, gas tank, styrofoam, and Houdini’s ghost counting down to an escape which is occurring slowly in so many ways infinitely delayed and decaying. Purchased on sight for the MOMA permanent collection. Provenance unknown.
A cuttlefish the size of a man’s thigh (tentacles protruding from its head like albino rasta, vibrant huffing swirls of mottled magenta roaming under translucent carapace) hyperventilating on concrete moments after being caught, still partially in green netting, its wide open dark eyes spinning panicked. The fisherman putting down his rod, carefully securing the lure, plucking a tiny orange-handled tool (like a dental tool with a little bright gleaming sharp metal pick), inserts it under the hood of the creature's head and without pause in a single gesture pierces it (brain to spinal cord) and as he does it gasps, a sound like someone slipping as they realize it, and a flood of black fluid oozes across the concrete as if exhaled. The creature puddles, slack, core pale inert, tentacles still twitching. It has been switched off. The fisherman glances at me and mutters something in Cantonese I do not understand. I do not understand.
Ashen black burn in a banana grove has revealed a rusted discarded fridge.
A girl pensive at the top of a ramp in the specific kind of trance biochemistry reserves for adolescents.
A once regal chair in the trash, its wicker spine flopping like a tongue, on a pool of thick broken glass before a corrugated paint-eczema fence.
Blissful black birds diving to caress a river of orange light left on dappled salty chop froth.
Hillside frenzy of jubilant trees, like arthritic ecstatic penitents fondling god, their green and broth brown branches boiling above a squat solid pink tiled people shelter by a path in the leaking light at day's end where the water licks a concrete wall.
57 stenciled onto chipped tile where a pockmark leaves crumbled punctuation.
4 schoolboys (all aged approximately 11, in navy school pants with mustard piping, cardigans, ties) seated together on the train's metal bench in a half-empty car, put their heads together to listen to the same phablet. Muscles slack, eyes half, glazed, rapt, arms entwined, a single immobile entity staring nowhere, tableau of concentrated frozen energy that coalesces for 15 seconds then disintegrates.
TEKCON Super Color TV Antenna box (with rainbow motif over a star field) leaning on a garbage can and a PL8519 double-padlocked electrical box (stained and grimy, scuffed and derelict), in front of a weedy low shed (built of junk wood, old plumbing pipes, rusted tin, and decaying nylon rope) in a quiet empty jungle valley village.
Late afternoon lustred concrete seawall stained with rusty rivers behind tufted ropes tying frayed wires to the base of a grimy bamboo pole holding a soft cracked creamy blank canvas and laundry lines that gently sway in a bluffing breeze where a single black swivel chair sits under a soft sky full of windows and walls.
A glistening luminous orifice of moist white sinewed flesh, its cut and separated strands open like a vulva coated in honey-crumbled deep-fried batter illuminated by 6 neon tubes, body-sized beside a fake pine coffee-shop table and chairs.
Mist cloaks a row of cargo derricks in a monochrome blur.
Beige fluffy velvet onesies (rabbit shaped) with blue-grey velour quilt cover and green down-jacket wrapping japanese pottery and a big bag full of candy vacuum-packed in crumbled spastic ruffled plastic sack.
Two dead branches fornicating behind a chain link fence on a concrete platform watched by a plastic chair, a decaying mountain bike, and a washer-dryer.
Hunched over pedestrian in baseball cap with white Hermes wings wearing a beige vinyl t-shirt that says GOD
Bed mattress stripped of all cloth, semi-immersed in pale sand among shore rocks, its rusted gritty spiral metal coils knotted with kelp and residual nylon frayed threads, casting dark symmetrical shadows on the pocked slack grit smooth sunlit sand. A chunk of amniotic fabric and a black heron-like bird at its side watching the waves come in and out.
A 3' x 4' cube of crushed and flattened pop and beer cans bound with welding wire on a sidewalk next to a smudged electric pile under a pool of bamboo netting and a 3 story. coach billboard. Crowds.
5 year old girl in crimson frock coat on tram wearing pale-rimmed spectacles with a velvet sky-colored serrated-edge patch over one lens.
Happy face carved into Japanese garlic flavored Tartare cream cheese smeared on saddle shaped Lays Stax cheddar chip held upright by two fingers whose nubs also smeared in cheese are ears for that face that will in a moment be eaten.
Two cellphones taking photos of “rock ‘n rooot”: huge knotted roots as large as athlete thighs gropea tumescent stolid shed-sized boulder, in a grotto of debris, by the edge of the sea.
Danger;: no entry. Work in progress. folding nylon signage propped against a decaying brown banana tree in a marsh
Red nozzle spray bottle resting on row of urinals. Sticker NKB.
Lime green toothpick held by fingers grey nail polish piercing mangosteen.
Grape seed on coffee saucer with upside down teaspoon.
Row of clocks behind check-in counter labeled: Tokyo, Bangkok, New York, Hong Kong.... All of them showing midnight. Echoes of old neoist chant: 'it is always 6 o'clock'
Pixelated tripod on rusted pink. Moist mayo leaks slopped anti-aliased pixel steps from sienna to dirty moire. Relish drooping glitch. BBQ membrane shadow crevice.
Aluminum hot dog heat rack (empty) with floor of small smooth pebbles, enclosed by glass. Next to it, a compact amber siren light (stationary, silent) and one pair white cotton gloves (knotted in a ball).
Oval coil of wire protruding from blue plastic, dragged along inflamed flesh which extrudes a slender thread of creamy pus.
Daishuki signing autographs on Tokyo City Dome platform. surrounded by enclaves of googling twittering tablet-sequined pajama-party-bagged, pompom earrings, with blush awakened, ado hipster androgynous girls in pumps suits miniskirts and creamy velvet short coats holding circular portraits on pale wood sticks of k pop boy boot band glossy saran wrapped beside suitcases on wheels full of paralegal paraphernalia, stuck in the hedges that line the selfie-saturated promenade beneath a silver super hero statue.
Teflon pan display rack fronded with albino tinsel garlands. Approximately 30 garish price announcements. TV merch broadcaster at max volume brandishes pan vertically as egg assets roller coaster toward lens.
Upside down hand-rag chipmunk with shamrock polka dots under bright neon grill.
Black to auburn then emerald gradient from the roots to tips of waist-length hair that sleeps around a squat perpetually-satisfied moon-face, its edges masked with simple accretions of foundation blush and baroque mascara. A clacking marks the steady weave of her hands threading discarded clothes onto chrome-plated hangers. Gold lame bunny hair bow. Long stretch sparkley skirt, fishnet stockings, flat shoes. 6 stacked trolley carts. Podium doorway rows. Periscope lighting. Mod garage vocoders on an internal sound system. Snare trill crescendo. Bracket grey hanging racks. Duplicated shirts with African motifs duplicated in sulphate mirrors. Fuzzy socks with red dots. Accents between the walls.
Neoprene rabbit with a hole in its cheek sitting on a bench in a plaid skirt.
Seven Stars cigarette pack propped open 80% full on a slat table next to a wormhole CD, a tupperware container (containing a mitsubishi aa battery and connector jacks) , 4 effects pedals and a double-fist clot of fresh steel wool. Wakomatse playing in Sendagi.
TEMPORARY NOT WORKING sign on kiosk of interactive exhibit
Be aware of the glass: signage in front of No. 43 turquoise long necked bottle, Funseiji celadon, behind glass, at base of stairs with twisted glass railing.
hp desktop box, cut open and flat with monochrome collage of aloe vera and toothpaste scrawls mounted on wall.
INAX HyperKILAMIC Shower toilet in cubicle with mahogany floor and buffed concrete wall.
Man asleep in chair in front of washroom doors in a dim empty museum hallway. Foot outstretched over tiled linoleum, head slipped onto a shoulder, arm dangling
Fingers of an elderly women moving like gerbil tongues, rubbing in a skin cream lotion as a balm against aging, polishing wedding ring, moles and sarcoma blotches into a bland sheen.
Thermo recorder ( like a child’s bulky toy cell phone, pink and white and plastic and stubby, with cord coiled around antennae ) abandoned on black carpet flooring, inadvertently isolated in a soft puddle of light, in front of a gleaming black velvet corner wall.
Types of glue (sign) over a mottled cream rack, chrome hinged bracket bar and a custard-plated bristo-board, on which a belt buckle and attached belt amputated at the neck (exposing a speckled dry-glossy-coal-glue interior) leans against a translucent blue hand-gun water-pistol with 4 tiny animal head stickers on its muzzle ( waxen rabbit, pink pig, elephant, sun cat) in front of a plexiglass heart edged with fake rhinestones (on which is glued an ornate tiny key, 3 petunias and a single earring), a fleshy sequined rose garden phone cover, and a tiny tv broadcasting a commercial for gold point epoxy glue complete with charts of strength, capacity to glisten photos, heal drain pipes, fix zippers, seal perforations, and plug holes in fish tanks.
Grey 6x4 feet rectangle, bolted to frame, surrounded by murky gestural smudges, illuminated evenly,
Paik/Abe oscillator, channel switches, rca-bnc, mix wipe, attenuator switch synthesizer replicas stacked on white table, behind plexi, lime fritz strobe distort background.
In the metro train, a 'Jim Bean World's No. 1 Bourbon' ( golden hued beneath a torrent of ice, held by an anemic over-exposed model ) on a poster suspended among a forest of hand grips. Farther down a tabloid poster ( blue white and black ) . Then more, doom radiant endless flat replications. Hands arms. Eyes shut, eyes that rarely meet. Implicit privacy; public space.
reinforced circular holes threaded with thin wire, affixed to wall with finishing nails in a horizontal row.
Blood on cobblestones
Eviscerated tuna skull split straight down centre, amid entrails of pink grey russet sludge, one gouged empty eye socket staring at the dingy stained turquoise plastic laundry hamper that cradles it.
Blown glass bowl with single dandelion bloom on beige.
One does not get lonely with the ocean. Look what it has carried in tonight. Two boulders, a pipe, a wedge of leaves, Styrofoam as usual, form as usual, and the hissing of its tongues turning over in a sigh.
Corn cob, partially pecked, suspended from four leafless branches nailed to form a cross.
Buffed wood railing, worn bare by touch, on which a tiny peeling taped laminated sign: This is disinfected 4 times a day.
Man in walkie talkie holds broken slab of dented white Styrofoam in front of HD cam with number 6 on its chassis as white balance before a queue.
Thin fibrous sienna root tendrils descending in a bundle down a granite wall (where peeling curled char of pollution and mould mingle) dive into a round drainage orifice in the wall face to seek out in its interiors some morsel of moisture or matter, soil of the mind's intent. A pedestrian passes and spits into the hole next to it where a thick root arm has penetrated the depths; the wall begins to weep mucous.
Street baked bbq sweet potato, earthy charred skin snout peeled back to reveal orange pulp.
A 3 foot long fish, arced as if leaping, tail flipped, gut slit, throat cut, in a translucent plastic bag at the base of corrugated concrete stairs.
Two white connected plastic canisters, spinner assembly, pipes, hose, grill, empty gasket, half-full with sand, above the shoreline, freshly washed up, an almost complete washing machine minus motor, courtesy of the enigmatic ocean dumping grounds. The machine's rusted rotor points to the lustred boulders of the bay shining in the dusk light, haunches dipped in gentle froth. Debris of all kinds.
The letter È on beige.
Sniffing a skinless bbq chicken leg, an elderly woman in wool cap and cozy pink scarf is scrutinized by another elderly woman in beige cap with matching scarf and earrings who appears inquisitive about the verdict.
Decayed stucco hut, roof tied with ropes to rods rooted in rough earth, doors and windows partially patched with dessicated grey boards, in a jungle clearing where a few blue barrels fall slowly into the grass.
Glistening red berries among the low underbrush printed on discarded aluminum food wrap.
Under daylight bulb, quinoa, frozen pea, mung bean soup with asymmetric fresh ground pepper and a dissipating doodle of bragg's.
Refill chafing fuel in 5L paint tin. Iridescent pink. Black spoon riding on it's translucent oil.
Stacked stools on their side; legs interwoven. Mango plastic box stack. Coconut jello. Wicker seats like bulldozer treads. Ganesh family poster. Tartan over shrimp tom yum boxes. Bent nub of aluminum trays. Star tinsel dangling from cone lights. Woman in fur hat and green scarf.
OUT OF SERVICE. 8 thin strips of masking tape ( messy scraps ) holding a cowl of wrinkled black plastic over a urinal
Yuk leaving my office wearing a red shirt and silver shoes carrying Panpsychism in the West.
Empty neon tube holder. Duct taped in the center a tiny sign that says: Energy saving.
Solitary over-ripe banana abandoned on beige plastic photocopier next to the printout tray ( holding a recently printed CV ) and a nearby didactic sticker which wordlessly warns against putting a box too close with an '!' inside a diamond.
A few soft ashen wobbly clots of soap? mould? wax? snot? in the clear residue at the bottom of an empty plastic container of clorox disinfecting wipes.
Mirror glass corner catches half a face on either side. A young mother. A child.
Two reinforced steel L rebar stakes in the sidewalk, one on each side of a slim tree trunk which they support with tight coiled ropes looped around the trunk itself from each side pulled taut and professionally cinched so that a noose of soft hose gives even stabilization. The tree crown lies on the sidewalk, the leaves just beginning to wither and dry. It has broken off directly above the support ropes, it's trunk like a busted shattered tooth.
Banana scrub brush burn smoking beside a small unrigged sailboat on the sand. A lanky disheveled silhouette poking it with a stick.
Gnawed carrot (huge), single hello kitty flip flop (toddler), leather wrap (scraggly).
STATION OR DAMAGE LANDS DEPT. stenciled and faded on the sunlit cusp of a cylindrical pillar marking a mountain peak
Restocking the cat food tiny tins.
The island thrusts gnarled fingers into the sea toward anchored tankers resting like microbes in the dusky haze.
Now the white light sheen for a moment touches the low rough waves, etching the air's water into a bright mist. From the dark bowed boat a green net sways where on a winched rope men silhouetted among gulls pull beings from the wet.
Spontaneous occupy protest shopping crowd gathering in causeway bay. A horde of Santa Claus rappers holding yellow umbrellas under the incessant glaze of a million watt consumer vexperience.
Thin neon filament illuminates beige angular debris crevice.
Wrinkled glossy vinyl sticker illuminated by neon tunnel lights, outlining taxi fares.
RESTRICTED printed in black ink with doodle roots emerging from letter stems encircled by an open swift-drawn oval.
On the overpass, a press walkie talkie squawks behind the temporary barrier they've constructed to protect their cameras in case of a crowd flood. At least a hundred HD lens on tripods with shotgun and parabolic microphones, plastic bins full of cabling, extension cords taped down running from coils, vests, helmets, stools, umbrella, plastic wrap, mini ladders, carts, tents, laptops. Beneath somewhere someone begins to beat a plastic pail haphazardly as if suggesting something in Morse.
The exodus has begun. I follow 20 students walking out, one wrapped in a honey-hued velour Winnie the Pooh blanket, another in a purple bomber jacket emblazoned Kings
... as they reach Queensway, the buses rumbling ground beyond the bifurcating paths, they pause and hug . A young man in full khaki, motorcycle helmet at his hip, smoking, breaks off, and is joined by several others: heading back in. 3 police follow. One girl who went in returns out, carrying a sleeping bag and tidy satchel bundles, her face like a tiny alert searchlight.
On the ground, peaceful crowds continue to mill around. Teams of media and medics. At the barriers on the eastern edge, all quiet, a scavenger moves thru investigating boxes under the bridge. People are silent. Trash scattered under abandoned shelters.
Office workers arriving for work: faces mute, simple. Navigating teams of crowd control in lemon uniforms who wait like culverts at top of stairs.
Underneath the Bank of America Merrill Lynch LED screen at the height of the tower, a few tents begin to deflate, clothes are folded, clusters gather to hear the last speeches. All is relatively calm before the storm. A yellow banner luffs above a silver tent: WE'LL BE BACK
On overhead walkway, a hedge of tripods, boom microphones and cameras ( some dormant and wreaked in clear plastic), tents and crowds scattered on the flyover highway below. The news cast live feed begins, a western woman with brunette hair holding a red notebook: 'Live in Hong Kong where we are expecting a major police operation to get underway now... The injunction goes into effect at 9am.... Standby'
Undercover cops in grey hoodies with knapsacks gather around a van in front of the Chinese liberation army base. Faces tense and closed.
Hundreds of cops beside orange buses. Black jackets with yellow stencil, POLICE. Press conference underway on sidewalk. 30 journalists in iridescent vests PRESS with video cameras on high tripods encircling a police spokeswoman wide mouth obscured by a thicket of microphones. Sound check: yat-yee-sam-say.
Nine portable cube-shaped Sony PVM-14N6E security monitors stacked in a grid with their screens turned toward the wall.
Burgundy black troglodyte fungal form under a few sips of clear water collected in surface indentation of house-size boulder on mountain peak.
Kid's watch. Poodle orange, mustache grey pontoons and helicopter pad in moulded plastic on beige pants over mustard and ash cotton. Blue sleeve.
Taxi ashtray. Mounted in buckling, back seat. Previous leather like lips ripped around terra formed plastic.
Seen from above, a plastic margarine tub full of translucent shrimp in sunlight on limestone shore rock beside a phosphorescent pink rag, seems cheerful and light, an omen of nothing.
Dusty boom microphone with oversize wind muffler suspended in slipstream skylight sepulchral shadow among dense jungle beside the island path.
Battered gold-hued velour swivel chair on cracked concrete sidewalk in front of 2 glamour posters at a hairstylist. Each models' hair perfected slants to obscure the eyes, directing the viewer's gaze to shining ruby lips and the head of the chair, –it's support-back sweat-stained grey-nap written smooth by sustained sitting.
Rust stain on isometric map.
A sleek grey dog, with the empty open flapping take-out styrofoam container in its jaws obscuring its head, running along a beach into the wind.
A dead mosquito on glass shelf.
In the shadows, a dead leaf is a lizard.
Panelled chrome, unintimidating child height, bowed waist. A hint of duct tape across its forehead ( mildly frayed ) conveys diligent optimism and lengthy service. An upward slanting Beep! ( red print balloon font on fanta background) promises comfort and functionally discreet card reading.
Behind it a sign on A4 paper taped on glass: Please use your own student ID card for hall access only. Violators may be subject to disciplinary actions.
Seen from behind: a bow-legged crone (in black coat with black umbrella horizontally poking at aluminum store grill)... an angular fossilized dryad poised to interrogate a metal wall.
3 stuffed dogs by a Universal S-828 paper shredder.
40 silver flounder hung head down, turning on strings like tinsel.
Knapsack badge brocaded into black canvas: Tennessee Handgun Unit, Department of Safety & .... (Obscured by plastic buckle)
There is only one figure on the sand under the leaden sky close to the water. It is the village matriarch leaning on a driftwood stick in her rubber boots.
As I get closer I notice she is fishing or something. A semi-spherical wire cage, perhaps for lobster or crab, bobs in the low surf at the end of a rope she holds in her withered right hand.
She has caught something. A creature lurching in the wet cage. Submerged by small waves, occasionally visible fluttering grey then doused again. She has caught something. She has caught a rat.
The matriarch tugs on her rope. The cage flops on its side. The rat scurries, claws in the wire; up, circling, submerged, up, circling, submerged.
The matriarch hauls on her rope; she brings the cage in, lifts the cage, wades into the edges of the water and throws. The story repeats. The rat caught in the low waves clinging to the wire, racing for breath, survives.
The matriarch hauls on her rope; she brings the cage in, lifts the cage, and for a moment as she turns toward her home I think how wrong I was. The cage with 2 rocks tied inside it is a home for her pet which she was washing as she does every week or so...
But she continues past her home and now our paths coincide though our languages do not. She points at the cage and says: waa-zee. I echo her, as she repeats this word which must mean rat. And together we hobble out to the pier. Me holding my garbage (a bulging kitchen bag), her the cage. The rat clinging to the wire is young small and very wet. It's eyes dark, it's nose pale.
And one thing I notice is the matriarch is not squeamish, she's got a good grip on the cage handle, the nose of the rat only inches away.
I dump my garbage in the pail at the foot of the pier; and she goes a few steps further and throws the cage over. This time it will work. The water is deeper here. The rat beneath a foot or so of clear swaying salt water, shoots immediately to the top of the submerged cage, clings, ricochets, swims clings ricochets...
The radio in the matriarch's cardigan pocket plays Chinese opera as the rat's belly flips visible to us, clinging to the highest place it can find, driven as close as it can get to a life it is leaving. There are a few rocks on the sand under the water around it. Froth wobbles on the waves as they wash in. The matriarch is wearing a faded GAP baseball cap, our gazes meet.
When I look again, the rat's belly is not visible anymore. It has let go. I imagine a few last reflexes. The lungs full of salt, a thigh twitching. Then it sinks away. Perhaps it still moves but now it is the movement of small inconsequential waves. The opera crescendos, energetic drums arise, to celebrate it seems the release of the rat, which sways like a sullen loose grey sock beneath the water.
Flip flop sandals on a beige window ledge, propped partially up, toes on the frame, their soles peering out at the neighbour's red brick wall.
A map of an island on a pole. Behind the plexiglass, an isthmusof mould connects corner to key attractions.
Beware of the Shaft SERVICE HOTLINE 2868 0000
3 dirty tea towels on a grimy rope tied to the handle of a sliding door. Inside the door, an old woman in a paisley frock, illuminated by the sun, sniffing the wind.
A stack of sweaty hot dog weiners in fluffy pastry beds with serpentine cream dribbles: Buy 2 Get 1 FREE.
Cut branches on an inner city roadway. A hydraulic lift platform in the tree top, orange helmets, face shields, taxis, phosphorescent yellow safety vests emblazoned with TREE SECTION. Scent of sap.
Red tide. In the low shore waves, beige plastic fragments, slips of packaging, and chunks of stained wood swirl among tongues of pink sludge. On the bay, a fleet of 4 styrofoam boxes glide like autonomous cubes. On the beach, 5 dead fish stare at a grey sky.
Mini track bulldozer under broken drowsy tarpaulin on soft aluminum spider legs haphazardly set in front of shed.
Scuba flippers blooming above dull khaki water, protruding on neoprene stalks, as if a mermaid leashed by her nose to the micro-filament-infested shoreside ocean-floor sniffs the sand.
or over moire
Street-thick throngs illuminated by the sustained silent lightning of thousands of sounds and billboards, root from underground, hands still slick from the escalator botox ads to writhe under ruby-framed white letters preaching: Forever 21
A severed tree limb (the size of a long giant thigh, with clean russet amputation cuts at each end, creamy smooth where bark has flecked away) at the base of a white plaster wall on concrete tiles, near a delivery road slipping between two huge university buildings, far from any trees, where jackhammers reverberate the air with violent sonic roots .
Meltronic: infrared scuffed urinal flush scanner panel.
Day-glo shrimp lure dangling above tank-green-matte-water. No sun except the tritium in its plastic parametric-contoured pink-leopard-sunrise killing-form flicked over polluted waves.
Low-shot from steaming bath of two soap bars stacked in a scummy translucent bowl, – & perched on top, profiled, gaunt elbows and knees, a young mountaineering cockroach with brisk agile antennas. Thwuf, he flies, erratic bounce lands on a suspended towel. Shufts to perch in far corner above toilet, and pauses in beatific reverie, perhaps snuffling some escapee sewage, perhaps sleeping.
The crossing*
In the dwindling light, illuminated by a golden wash from the luxury condo courtyard, in front of a parked BMW X1 coupe, a doorman, in brown suit, waves a blinking red LED sabre overhead.
Curved newspaper headline in bottom of office garbage pail: 'The Occupy roller-coaster won't put me off my day job, Benny Tai says' next to a photo of 6 men in suits holding up blue numbers as if they are Olympic gymnastic judges: 4 9 3 1 9 3
A tea towel, tied to a rail, stretches its arm back as its knotted head flies into the wind.
Green vinyl tape arrow on rusted chrome pole pointing at a loop of black velcro.
A hazy slur of purple grit glazed to grey pixeled jaundice.
( The image from the inside my phone camera lens covered in tape; after I, temporarily forgetful of the moratorium, opened it to photograph a page in a book )
Honey swirl on keffir over partially-defrosted-in-microwave strawberries.
Black speck in lower third of vertical gradient from grey to grey. A buoy floating on still waters at dawn in dense fog.
Dead grey-brown bird on grey concrete. Upturned eye open: head turned, right ear pressed to the path as if listening. A death so fresh the ants are still discussing the beauty of its wings, the regal mathematics of its feathers, the way its tail droops to the ground as if disappointed. As a wasp crawls under and begins to burrow into its neck.
Dead grey-brown cicada on grey concrete, head upturned, leg crooked like an arm, with hundreds of tiny ants, no bigger than specks of sand, ravenously running in and out if its mouth, neck, nostrils, wing pits, crevices and asshole.
Buckled rust door in rough concrete, held upright with wires to prevent it from falling to fight the leaves and a single faded newspaper at its feet.
On the concrete jetty, a single figure in the bright sun throwing garbage bags, they glitter in the air like obese coal, from dock to Sampan nose-first, its old truck-tire necklace bobbing against stones made sharp with teeth of mussels.
Shoulder-width orange dollar sign above honey drenching hive comb on plasma with 4k chopper bombing run in background. Light mask of musak. Scent of archetypal cleaner.
Orange lantern pods, leopard lilies, an iridescent fern, and wilting custard orchids with crimson speckled tongues. Behind glass.
A heap of hard back books, taller than a table, a bit smaller than a double bed, solid, irregularly stacked, leaking plastic wisps of transparent wrap.
Smiley face button. My name is Sippy. On black nylon.
Lime green shirt, hip on sidewalk, sunlit, taking notes in pad with pen before an open electrical utility box.
Small white grid below larger off-white and white juncture backlit by a fill-light slope of pale caulking, drywall dusted with tiny hairs.
City Cut 1F stairwell poster. Glossy sheen airbrush anorexia robotic supermodel among grimy rusted fuse boxes held together with charred packing tape.
Opaque emerald water, a silver fish, side fin pointing at empty sky, blood leaking from the smile of its gills.
Two plastic AA battery caps, black nipples on beige Ikea pillow.
Fellini moment. Woman in floral dress and big sunglasses holding a digital Bolex at her hip: a toddler in pink swimsuit, arms up, red bucket on sand.
Purple container strap with white text: 'Botox Hope' over monochrome camouflage luggage on chrome rack.
He takes a photograph of her pretending to take a photograph. Everywhere is the clicking of lens.
Someone has bent the fence metal aside, so crowds can gather on the harbour boulders at dusk; and there, etched with light, they worship a golden horizon with upraised phones.
An orb burning above the sea. Beyond the rubble breakwater, one hundred derrick cranes floating in the smog.
Parallel strips of smudged LEDs behind glazed dirty tape. One out.
Letter-size slot. White mylar. Icon of human stick-figure throwing pixels into an open top trash can. Bilingual Canto-anglo: LITTER BIN
Through the boat window, the late afternoon light, rushing across dark choppy swaying waves, illuminates half a coil of thick jaundiced rope looped around an ankh of steel bound to the rail and so bitten with rust its flesh is ancient bark.
Symmetric stacks of plastic-moulded steel-legged chairs wrapped in a plastic green-white ribbon announcing: 'Area Closed'
Golden light. Too bright to see more than silhouettes of tankers, the flank of a mountain slipping into the sea. Hair that rises in the wind. Profiles glazed.
At the base of the stairs, one man is filming another in the almost dark under the trees where ornamental rocks edge the grass. The subject stands immobile, calculating his trajectory, then lays his hands on a rock and sweeps both legs over it.
4 aging men in bright medieval velvet robes behind a plastic podium on a mechanic lift, horn concerto.
There are more tourists and witnesses today, parsing the mute imminent dissolution of scarred tents, barricades, and increasingly scuffed yoga tiles.
Black tarpaulin with yellow notes in shape of umbrella under humid plastic taped to Nathan Road pavement.
Wrinkled khaki green triple over size shirt with 200pt Helvetica white letters in back: SICK AND TIRED
attached to triggers.
4 plastic storage bins on a concrete floor by a cream wall, each with an icon: shoe, sock, shirt, pants.
Gilded brim baseball cap, navy with gold lettering: “USS SHANGRI-LA CV-38” (between the words a silhouette of a destroyer) worn by an 80 year old male with wide ears, wide mouth and wide nostrils, a plaid shirt, napping behind the plywood ferry bridge as it sways into Aberdeen.
A cast of hand missing a thumb resting on and pressing open page 14 of Hayles & Pressman's Comparative Textual Media, open to an essay by Rita Raley where the fingers touch the words: 'inevitable ontological distinctions'
Derelict mustard punt made of wood, floating on teal-concrete harbour sludge: stacked on its roof, styrofoam crates, their wounds sealed with bright red packing tape.
Thumb broken off alabaster plaster lying beside its hand on water-buckled linoleum.
New soap dispensers, deodorant, ex-foliants ( Dettol, Johnson, Dove, Speed Stick...) beneath a poster: 2 senior citizens in beige sports jackets, smirking, double thumbs up for 'Low prices : Like! Like!'
Dusk flock of white ibis in dark green trees beneath faded pink highrises.
A man in light blue pale shirt and dark vest stands gesturing forward in the bow of a small green fiberglass boat, piled high with garbage bags.
“Donning instructions”: B&W life-jacket safety poster, A8 size, decayed so that faces are bleached orbs inside mottled clouds, glued onto frayed plywood (Bilingual Cantonese-English).
The back of a seated ginger cat on a decaying hardware-store counter, next to a pocket calculator, eating kibble off an open appliance catalog. Behind her the fingers and belly of the clerk, a pencil stub, shelves.
Thin white hair under thin black threads of a faint hair net on an elderly man in wheelchair; gold rings in both ears droop like wet dough onto the shoulder of an oversize grey suit.
Four fresh cut plant stalks sticking out of a black garbage bag.
Dawn. Beyond the filament mesh of the screen and thin vertical windows of the door, a canvas chair, a balustrade and the ocean, stirred by a shorebound wind.
An asymmetrical knot of flexible shiny silver shower hose droops above pale enamel.
Corners of a grey towel casting shadows over an inverted stirrup of empty chrome.
A 6 cm red ragged scratch with a dozen or so red welts. Pink at both ends.
A container ship,1/3 km long, at night on black water, 50 lights along its flanks.
mould spots on a scrubbed scuffed beige wall. blastocyte bright-core specks, frayed black edges.