"No sex for six years!" She announces authoritatively. Her voice is horse from standing and shouting in the cold dark wet traffic of the haunted shopping district that is this place.
"Now that I've got your attention." She starts again,
"No Housing for five years!"
"No Charity for Seven years!"
This goes on for the entire duration I am waiting for the light to change. For a moment I consider joining her on the meridian, I imagine forming a coalition watch dog group for paranormal traffic violations. Our mission will be to announce the procedures needed to maintain multidimensional relations. It is widely known that the sections of this mall region were constructed over the archeological foundations of another people, archeologist hired by the companies who sought to developed the area in the 90's found numerous shell mounds representing millions artifact. This story was told to me during an interview I did for a community magazine in the East Bay the first few months I was working here. The man I was talking to claimed to have been an archeologist on the project that discovered the sites. The job was put on hold and a new team (because every company is a team) of consultants was brought in to reassess the situation. The new team constructed a much more reasonable proposal for the development of the area. In recognition to this territories past 40th street morphs into Shellmound Street leading to Ikea, an AMC Theater, and a little further down the way to Powell Street Plaza Shopping Center. Good things seldom happen here. Not far from where I am right now I was once given a traffic ticket in front of a Pet Co for running a red light on my bike: $436. A few months later I had a bad accident on the same stretch of road just in front of the Best Buy."No employment for 8 years!" she screams just as the light changes and I am off hoping to make it through the area without injury. To do so one must avoid the Emery-go-round Shuttles that travel between the Bart Station and the main shopping centers making frequent stops, there is also a matter of merging into the left lane in order to turn on Hollis Street and right on Mandela Parkway.
Under the MacArthur 580 Freeway are the chain linked lots of fettered concrete slabs overgrown grasses, and bobtails seeding the desolation of this region.From here it is a straight line to the West Oakland Bart station. The Flats, as they are sometimes called, are an uneasy mixture of industrial force aiding and abetting the continued notion of our manifest destination. There are entire lives lived under shadows of the steal and concrete plants near by. The electronic crossing guard on the right side lane of the parkway at the corner of West Grand has been broken for years, the recorded voice of a female endlessly repeats an undecipherable warning to all who pass.
...
Thinking about Blake in the City,
see Milton:
Between South Molton Street & Stratford Place:
putting us somewhere on Davies Street or Oxford Street if I am reading this map correctly. Where Blake lived before and after his ill fated move to Felpham (the only time in his life when he was not living in London). (Johnson: 234)
There is a map to made of this some how. Blake draws his visions from his surroundings, He is seeing all there is to be seen in space, London appears as we see it and as he does, called by another name: Golgonooza, Created by Los, it is the city of "art and Manufacture" (Damon: 162).
The spaces he draws from his attention to the world not "imagined" because for Blake attention is not complete unless it is fully engaged with the imaginary sense that is needed to see everything there is to see. Where the known world stops, content on the organization of generalities as the limit of our knowledge, Blake urges us to continue past this point.
....
Finished reading: Hunt for the Eye of Ogin.Great!
Started reading: 2666
It is Friday, Christmas is coming.
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