June 22 2020
There is a particular quality to the silence of human desperation; editing the image in front of us to protect ourselves is easier when you can close the curtains on it.
I miss the balcony at the old house. I miss seeing the city from high above. Now at night I sit awake in my glass dollhouse and watch the city decaying directly in front of my perfect picture window panes. White picket fences line every walkway. The cars are expensive and the street is clean, but the people are cheap and generally mean.
As the effects of the pandemic have progressed, more tears in the seams of their false perfection have begun to appear. It manifests most clearly as of late in piles of household furniture, appliances and construction off cuttings left at the corner. Some of it left behind during a move, but mostly now because the home had upgraded whatever it was they had disposed of. Little of it broken. All of it salvageable goods for those with needs and means to collect and restore the items. Both the experienced and the more newly destitute frequently come together to search the wreckage. I myself have pinched a particularly nice antique table that I use frequently in photos.
I’m really not sure what to make of this strange tangle of anthropological entrails. Where once it would have been only the very destitute, now the such distinctions between our class have become largely irrelevant, retained only by our circumstances. Some scout ahead while on jobs, then come back in trucks to take the biggest appliances and construction cuts for side profits; young couples searching for home furnishings; and like hungry strays, some come only in the deep night, to raid upon whatever bedding and upholstery may be left. Sometimes they look like they’ve never spent a night on the street in their lives and that they never will again. They’re only just trying to get by for that one night and hopefully the next. And the next. And on it goes from here on out into forever. And all I can do now is sit and watch as my own power to resist the decay fades.
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