It becomes an obsession. Becomes an obsession. An Obsession. Obsession.
Narrated in a deep and raspy voice, haggard almost:
—
How did I end up here, living in the future?
I’ve said this before: maybe a dozen times to
some. And yet the profundity– the gravity of the
sensation grows every time I step outside of my
concrete box I call home.
And here’s how I see the future: I see shopping
malls as big as pyramids, made of glass, chrome
and faux-gold. I see sidewalks, stacked on top of
sidewalks. Up above, in the light, there walks
the young and prosperous. Underneath, the air is
almost palpably filled with choking blackness.
You can’t touch it, but you can’t take a deep
breath: your body rejects the putrid, dark air.
It is dark, below. In some places even when the
sun shines. Blocked by sidewalks, by highways,
highways on top of highways, trains above
highways above all. Looking down, I see highways.
Here, four lanes of white lights; four lanes of
red lights. They don’t move, or move
imperceptibly slow from my bird’s-eye view in the
aptly named SkyTrain. Four lanes each, stacked on
top of another four lanes each. Underneath used
to be the ground. But now the ground has risen.
It’s grown to filled with cars, with pollution,
with too-little light. So now the ground is
higher. Now the ground is made of faux-marble
covered pavement, filled with bright lights, like
subterranean stars, reflecting the colors of the
towering malls above. The ground has become
underground. An underworld. An under class. Under,
under, under.
I see the future. And it scares me. And it draws
me in. It’s not a healthy attraction, not a
joyous attraction. It’s the attraction of the
femme fatale, the attraction of
destruction, of disease, of ruin, of glorified
death! It’s the attraction of selling one’s soul
— a promise of immortality, in exchange for your
life. A new life. A brighter life. A trendy,
happy, fast life. Life full of people, places,
moments, places and brands. It’s brighter, here.
More exciting here. Happier here. Just don’t go
down there.
The mountains are no longer
remembered– their grandeur has long since been
eclipsed by the grandeur of man’s mountains of
concrete and glass, rushing to the sky– a
million verandas, people live there. a million
identical windows, people work there. Up and up
into the sky.
In time, too, the stars are forgotten, Their dull
shine is sometimes visible through the haze of
pollution, but even at their brightest, the man
made stars shine brighter: and shine a rainbow of
colors such as those god fashioned could never
have across the millions of miles. The man-made
stars are closer, brighter. Mommy, were stars
always red and green? Once, before the glory
of man, they were plain and faint and white.
Mommy, who made the stars? We did, honey.
We did. We turn them on, we turn them off, each a
testament to our glorious accomplishments, to our
glory! to our glory!
—
Strange: my obsession with understanding the filth and poverty of Bangkok has been completely replaced with an obsession of understanding its wealth, its booming expansion, its inconceivable opulence. The former distressed me, but the latter terrifies me. The former is history. The latter seems our destiny. It’s only a matter of time.
That’s depressing.
In case I didn’t make myself clear, this isn’t some apocalyptic vision: it’s my observances of Bangkok yesterday.