New Cities/New Soviets

May 21, 2003

Transportation Without Destination

It is a queer time to be alive. So many doors are open, and so many lead to the open desert.


TRANSPORTATION WITHOUT DESTINATION

Where do you want to go today?

Anywhere you want...for a price. What place is worth the price?

Movement is an anesthetic, a simultenaity of tension and release. Push and go... The long walk around Manhattan has been my best painkiller in the years I have lived here. But it is a painkiller with a tragedy behind it. All motion must come to rest. Although the desert is large, space is not, finally, frictionless. Legs give out, or feet, or back. Hunger sets in, or fatigue. Sleep will not be forever abated.

I had a friend who believed that sleep was unnecessary, weakness, retreat. He read restfulness as "low-grade depression." He would go until he dropped where he stood. One morning I found him lying in the hallway near my apartment door, under him the crushed remains of a partially eaten cheesburger and a handful of fries. He wore his contacts for months at a time and regularly talked himself hoarse. He took cocaine, but he was not a cocaine addict. He was addicted to perpetual movement, and he used anything he could get his hands on to keep his kick going. He popped with energy, his veins stood out, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. He picked fights for the pure rush of adrenaline, made friends and alienated people, lived here and there, kept on the go. We could not, inevitably, remain friends for long. He only felt I was honest with him the one time we faught. Our relationship, too, would be rendered for fuel.

The left is still enmeshed in a philosophy of escape, of leaving. While the bipolar construction of the globe in the Cold War epoch offered much to get away from, further repetition of the lesson is excessive. We have learned, we are away. There is no need to look for the desert, the desert is here.

Posted by Sam at May 21, 2003 06:43 PM

which left
the left out or the left back or the left right
rest is motion postponed
keep up the search

Posted by: gcs47 at May 21, 2003 11:19 PM

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