30 Jan 2010 - The Disjointed City

Walking and driving, changing to whatever seemed to best serve the narrative.

There was an odd group of people with a large white sign advertising a BBQ. They were dressed in ... outfits that resembled white burkas; they looked like tall limestone monuments. I couldn't quite see their faces. I don't think I was invited to whatever they were doing.

The area near Agricola and Gottingen was under construction. I hadn't been there for a long time and an incomplete building stood on the corner, it's metal girders describing a several story building-in-progress. I knew there were other new buildings in area that were in various stages of completion and thought it was pretty cool, what they were doing to this part of town. Indeed, where I was walking looked clean and bright and modern.

There was a young man on the street who, while handsome enough, had about him an air of panic and desperation. My own anxiety went up as he approached me. But all he wanted to know how to get to (unintelligible). I didn't know what he was saying, I didn't know where that was. Inspired, I took out my BlackBerry. Maybe the GPS application could help. The BlackBerry showed us a map of what looked like the city, maybe from around the mouth of harbour, McNabb's island, but it was zoomed in too close to tell for sure and panning over and over couldn't quite show us what we wanted to see. There was a second man that had shown up and I was fearful of the two of them robbing me of my BlackBerry.

I drove in the dark. To the right in a copse of trees was a white sign, the same one I'd seen with the monument people, advertising the BBQ. I stopped the car and noticed what look like heaps of grey and white ash from leftover fires. Approaching closer, I realized the white was the monument people lying in the road among the ash. Grateful that I'd seen them before I'd run them over, I moved slowly, walking through them, careful not to step on anyone.

I found myself inside a dark room where I wondered how I'd fit in this case that looked like a speaker, the kind you'd plug in your electric guitar. I lifted it and unsuccessfully tried to fit my body under it, wondering how I'd done it before since this was the speaker/amp that had protected me from the nuclear blast. I fretted over how much time this was taking and how I couldn't make it fit over me again, wondering if the robe next to me was maybe specially treated to protect the parts of me that couldn't get under the speaker....