(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

Oh! Mist filled wind
Oh! Pearl colored sky
Oh! This depthy aquatic realm where the rivers meet the sea
Oh! This Atlantis, this dreamworld, this Cleveland

Did I ever get into the details about my weird idea? I realize that I can't quite do it by myself, but I'd like to do it, get on it. I found out that a google doc file will automatically create a QR code for itself. And my idea is to work on my mythological history of Cleveland and then start posting up the codes in sticker form all over these places. Give people the chance to learn what the city is REALLY about.

When I was an historian, almost, I ran aground against the shoals of academia where foolish notions of truth and objectivity prevail. Said I: "The past is an amorphous, unvisitable place, a home from which the present has departed, angrily looking forward, never back." Really I never did actually say that- but I'm pretty sure some line to that effect found its way into my various essays. I love metaphors about time and especially time as a location that come up in history books. I recall one, it was something to the effect of - "The past is like an island in a dark sea, the waves may lap at it's shores and know it's shape, but in the darkness we cannot know what truly transpires there."

Course, so long as the lights stay on, we'll keep on living in this era from which no histories can be wrought, because everything is assiduously documented. For instance- here. History vs. Chronicle - a difficult thing to explain to the uninitiated? Or maybe this will be a period over-studied, scrutinized to the point where what is documented is dwarfed by the amount of analysis laid upon that documentation.

Maybe, possibly, I should rub my hands together, sinister, laughing - plotting - to fabricate a story of Moses Cleaveland - the Menes of Ohio, the American Gilgamesh - and then try, really hard to make it into the accepted legendry - that's the thing that scholars hate. I could do it, and then there would be this record, here, of my trying to sabotage knowledge for the future.

Seriously though, I've gone off the idea of social science - better, I say, to create the narrative that will bond people, enlighten and uplift them, no? Isn't it better?


Good enough for factory work.

The sky really is white, not from pollution, you understand (or not totally) but because of the water in the atmosphere. There's so many overcast days and they all seem like drudgery, or did. I'm coming to a better understanding - about the underwater city, it's a place for dreaming, for quiet where distances are magnified, sounds muffled, the stars are unseen as if the world were closing its eyes. There is no sun but the ambient light of luminous clouds, there are no shadows cast and on the edge of the world you can see the bleak dark horizon, black and white, something there is in Cleveland that is Elemental, of the fundaments of human existence. It's here that people are meant to live, who live best and worst. I'd say something about time, but there's not a clear enough sense of it. The white-sky-days wash into the black-sky-nights, and we're like sleepers huddled under blankets, insensible to the motion of days. Dreaming. This is the dreaming place, where you come to sleep.

In my history, Moses Cleaveland is conflated with Biblical Moses. He leads his people out of the perdition of America into the West - and finding a sweet place on the bank of the Green-Sea, he raises up his axe to cleave the land in two - providing for the East and West Siders each, by making it so that the city be cloven in twain - hence the name - the Split-Land, the Two-Lands.

I think it's unfortunate that there is no old wall, no ancient fortification (except the weird armory/brick-castle down in the flats) that circles the city, or once did. It's a thing of Europe that we've barely had in the states, I think of it as the only regrettable feature of our long prosperous peace.


Otherwise... I remain impeccably handsome, tall, strong, wise and virtuous. I am eager to eat well and rest well all weekend, I am eager to be sedate.

Comments

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

The white-sky-days wash into the black-sky-nights, and we're like sleepers huddled under blankets, insensible to the motion of days. Dreaming. This is the dreaming place, where you come to sleep.

Beautiful words.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks!

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I have spent a day in class with English Literary Theory (which kills beautiful writing stone dead). Sometimes it's just nice to read something imaginative :-)