*** was there, they had walked for a while down from the lower east side. fone dead but found it without asking, without hardly looking up, february, freezing, icy hazardous conditions.
the sidewalk was slippy. curbs flanked with grey pissed snow and nuclear trash.. The plaza was a construction site. it always had been, suspended in this state. come monument. come fortress. come into this shitter storm. shit castle of blue hoarding with a green waistband cutting a chunky figure. A pathway, a steel tube. Barrier and handrail. no sign of an opening.
truck steams past.
slamms down on thick rolled steel plates scattered over deep excavations in the road. the racket purged the street momentarily. it falls back into chaos.
We are dreaming of our organs and tubes like industrial processing plants and sewage systems, electrical distribution facilities and immersion boilers. Our water has too much iron in it. It’s illegal water and we cant swallow it. In a bed in the future. Lying naked in the morning light. We have a day off work.. The first Wednesday in June, and the group has made no plans it can agree on. after some time a torso and waist, jellied calves slop down a shabbychic staircase to make some breakfast. Two right arms in parallel-sync lower a block of fat against hot iron pan. An exquisite french farmhouse kitchen, in the modern style, lavender hangs in tight bundles about the walls, cut from the cloth of a worker's shirt bound with the straw of the fields surrounding. Hallucinating in butter and melting, beat eggs, fold out ripples over a chipped jug, and you can watch the grains move over and go viral.
Oh,,,... look,....pancakes have been produced by some muscular/synaptic intervention!ohyaaaaaaaaaaa! the kitchen functions better than it looks in the photograph. Now it is soiled and eggy., the liquid went inbetween the foot of a body and mixed with dirt and left prints, the prints could be traced and could be reliable for identification in court., WE DID IT WITHOUT EVEN THINKING, the bodies chanted in crass union from their collected mouth. We were careful we promise, they wont find us..,.and coffee and orange? Did they get spilled on our collectively responsible foot?., and squeezed, to death!, and the juicer was discovered primed on its shelf., and now post-coital in the sink.,,.....that Pwooooooooooahhhhh! that espresso has a real kick! Holding a hand as steady as it can be but shakes with adrenalin and lack of patience, draws a glossy syrup love heart that quickly loses its energy.
A second truck crashes past and throws up all over the road.
fresh kills is an estuary in the west of staten island it flows into the arthur kill river which forms the border between new york and new jersey. along the banks of the estuary is Fresh Kills Park, formerly Fresh Kills Landfill - formerly New Yorks main landfill site. The landfill site is nearly three times the size of central park. Etcetera.
the blue hoarding has site safety posters and legal documents pressed against it with clear plastic and black screws. further along a blue sign that reads ************ below it an instagram logo and a sky blue losenge. *** thought it knew what all this meant and sighed with a redundant fart. these things are here because of me. they are my legacy an i their champion. this joke i created that turned into a normal thing, a necessary means of communication, that spawned a new era.
They run a finger over the sign tracing the grubby blue body of the losenge
First this city. Then this hole! Now this hoarding! and this sign attached later! what was their responsibility to this thing now? this nostalgic ruin held nasty memories bittersweet.. and the contact glue going off almost instantly in a sharp winter morning several years ago pressed by the hand of a human worker they did not know, printed by some other organisation they did not know, paid for by yet some more that they did not know for reasons that did not fucking matter today..but this semiological encounter was a reminder of the colleagues that betrayed ***, that bullied them and took them to the cleaners, got what they needed and booted poor little *** out on their poor little ass..
The settlement was a simple seven figure sum and a small amount of legal accreditation. But none of this mattered now.The landfill was opened in 1947 and was originally planned to be active for 20 years before being redeveloped into a public park. At the peak of its operation, the contents of twenty barges – each carrying 650 tons of garbage – were added to the site every day.[3] In 2001 it was estimated that, if kept open, the landfill would have eventually become the highest point on the East Coast.[3] Under local pressure and with support of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the landfill site was closed on March 22, 2001, though it was temporarily reopened soon after for the forensic investigation and cleanup project following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
A gore-tex chestnut boot steps off the sidewalk into unstable fagash sewerratcorpse. Wrapped up warm but the remaining skin exposed feels stressed, chapped by the constant shifts between the street and artificial heat of the stores.
JANET follows the blue hoarding around the perimeter of the site dragging their galvanised hand along a 2 inch green vinyl strip of decoration, collecting dirt. Think about stroking a train pulling out of a station and its acceleration, sensitively through its fingertips being activated by such a force. the metal at speed feels fluid like liquid. this makes JANET think about the film snow piercer that it watched the other week. a train on a perpetual cycle around the world, a world of ice, the next ice age where nothing can survive. and its ultimate crash. a perpetual engine and ecosystem. it explodes and the train derails and the human future inside is ended. it would always end this way. and a polar bear emerges in the snow. oh the polar bear! - a big fluffy fuck you at humanities desperate attempt at preservation. the earth is warming and life is restarting. but the pumping motion of the train circulating through an impossible network of railroads and tunnels with the earth as its cyborg body is over.
***'s lips were crisp in the dry morning air. they stood for a while and looked deep into the hoarding for answers. They passed their tongue over a tingle on their lower lip and felt a small mound of fluid that preceded a sore. What did famous celebrities do when they got coldsores on the day of a premier? or an interview? they probably cancelled.
their focus came back to the hoarding...
...when we started this thing we created the possibility that we would come into contact with it today.
walking around this monument and the possibility that this fortress might say something to us might mean something to us as its ULTIMATE subject, its tourist. we have to believe that it was designed with us in mind, each specific one, . We are in the future now and this sign, against this particular painted hoarding seems specifically to be all for us. it is something we definitely did.
JANET is stood outside the visitor center. It is transient like an aid center, like the occupation of a storage unit. built in a hurry, theatrical volumes and in this sense its functionality was responsible. did it used to be a bank, a payday loan shop summit like that? bright white light and aircon heat stink fucked human flesh upon entering and seemed like an unsavoury welcome to JANET. new jersey, old jersey. at your arrival, a clean rotten feeling. You can buy NYPD and FDNY official merch here. the tags all have holographic prints and feel better quality than the ones on the street.
more vinyl on the wall. images. aerial views, birds eye views. fading in and out.
gloss plastic like the tube of a pen, the surround on your fone and the border of a tv. all supporting mechanisms, coping mechanisms for technologies that stop their materialities and liquids from spilling out into youre pocket or living room floor. and these parts feel important their smoothness and the moving reflections of light. *** was already in there. They extended their finger and pushed it against the black surface of a flat screen monitor displaying a blue no input screen. harder and harder until the finger was red with pressure. Rings of coloured fluids dissipates to a dull residual silhouette.
*** reached into their bag and pulled out their brand new digital camera. a surprise gift from *** before the trip. and snapped a picture of the fading print of the finger in the screen
it is said that the majority of the salvaged steel was shipped to india, recycled and used in the production of cutlery and similar items.
*** felt self conscious about this and avoided contact with people inside the visitor center. They had at least three coldsores. intermittent, puckering mounds throbbing like little pulsing red led’s on their chapped mouth hot and sore with toxic fluid. Their nose was blocked with snot, collecting in cavities and tunnels, increasingly irritated in the rim of their nostrills from repetitive rubbing. *** kept their hat and sunglasses on, loosening only a scarf allowing the neck to breathe a little. the virus was as much psychological, and although precautionary measures had been regularly taken for this recurring ailment, in the moment of an outbreak or even an inkling, there was complete emotional chaos and horror. A constant panic until it had healed.
No longer devestated and 17 years old, now more understand of everything and the dead phone in their backpack.
We want to cope with these technologies but remain intact.We chanted in our head, to keep our thoughts of our throbbing mouth.
A huge cabinet was full to the brim with a heavy black bent mass. hard to make out until my nose was smushed right up against the glass. dense and charred. looked brittle and nuclear manipulation. The museum there held samples of molten girders which had turned to liquid under the atomic force of the explosion. The same thing almost. a metallic inert death. i wanted to have some of it on display in my home. and when people asked what it was, i would say it was a meteorite from a distant unknown world that i bought from the internet..The visitor center was dimly lit and empty. the yellow light of the cabinet semed to be the only light source around. *** could see a couple of other people in the distance and the attendant but no security.
*** wanted to reach through the glass as if it were liquid and feel the cold metal upon their fingertips. *** was fascinated by this object and if it could be within arms reach, and infact touched, it would mean more to *** than anyone else. They leant forward and let the face rest against the glass, breathing loud and heavy.
against the glass now, nose and mouth squished into its surface. uuuuuuuuuuurgggggghhhhh.
Contaminated skin and drool juddering against the polished surface, if *** was going down they were taking everyone with it. The sores began to hiss at the sight of violent dead steel. sweat and saliva fusing skin to the glass like contact adhesive. *** pushed their fingertips against trying to break through. the sores on their face squealed and popped like meat cooking. eyes fixed on the dense black mass. Nobody stopped ***, not even when the squealing pitch of their mouth filled the entire room, and the guards face got so red he had to cover his ears, for what felt like 10 minutes this moment passed...
...tbc