Archive for August 21st, 2014
solitary presence
Loathsomeness awaits, in the deep.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is never more alone than when waiting for a Subway to arrive. Swaddled in stifling clouds of fungal spore ejaculate and those desiccated airborne particulates of rodent excrement which lend the dripping concrete caverns their particular perfume, the “system” must be the loneliest place on earth, despite the abundant representation of the human infestation whom are found therein. Depersonalization is a specialty of the “system,” which redefines individual personages as “ridership” and let’s everybody who uses it know that there is nothing special about them, whatsoever, despite whatever status they hold in the radiant world above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In forgotten side tunnels and hidden chambers, all throughout the system, what might lurk? One does not forget the 1980’s, when rumors of a population of indigents who set up housekeeping in these antechambers abounded amongst the above ground population. Stories of grasping hands reaching up from sidewalk grates at small dogs and women’s ankles tantalized with latent horror, during that particularly dark age in the history of the megalopolis.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Jackson Heights, mothers assure their children that the Rakshasha do not hide in the tunnels, as do the folks in Flushing when they tell their kids that there is no È Guǐ waiting to carry them off into the darkness down here. So too do parents console, on the south side of Williamsburg and all along the G and F lines, instructing that there are no Comprachicos hiding in these vaulted tunnels of rotting cement, waiting to make a meal of some toddler or small child. It should be pointed out that MTA workers never go anyplace alone in the system, and instead prefer to move in large groups.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down here?
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