MEMORIES OF A METROPOLIS, or (when we BEGIN TO claim sight in darkness)
VOLUME I (THE TOURIST), 2014 — 2024

It is winter of my early years. I hail from a small town, a town where sport runs rampant in passing to occupy the decades of lost time for many. It is a town that stands on the edge of nature with metal and mallet in hand with hapless smiles. I grow anxious looking for work to rest my mind.


I get a call down from a metropolis for a job. Although a lover of nature, curiosity springs forth to understand the foundations and machinations that birth from the depths of a metropolis. I move to the heart of this city, carrying far more than is needed, far more than what I will leave behind. The work provides a meager sum, but the daydreamer in me yearns for the creativity it upholds.

I fall in love with the energy that pervades the seamless structures, the steam billowing up from the streets morning, noon and night, the damp fog amidst the cold mornings from the mouths of passerbys, the endless chatter. And yet, I look for something that I might know in the concrete of this metropolis.

I see a man, cradling his face in the darkness of the subway, lights emanating from the trains onto his haggard form, as if his routine is something no man or woman should live by. I see a man walking through masses of detached people, wrapped in old brown blankets, and a blanket for a child, patterned in cartoons many have forgotten. I see a woman lying in the shadows of construction with her children, wearing the clothes of souls that came before her. The children hug her close.

I wander these streets as an aimless paraclete, hoping to remedy the wrongs cast upon the people trapped upon these grounds. I give money and food to many, yet they still remain. I question my place in time, our place in time, wondering why we cast great weight upon another. Men can be heard screaming needlessly of quarrels settled long before. I escape the noise by going to the theater, where people still may wonder.

When I walk from these doors, I see the endless expansion of this metropolis, trees being pulled from their roots by men whom eye their watches for time to wander themselves, birds pecking amongst the puddles that lay on the sidewalks that many step, carrying their history of dust, dirt and chemicals I cannot pronounce. Am I to remain a witness to these deeds while the crowds sift on by?

No, I will not let these memories be left behind.
These memories still live, these Memories of a Metropolis.