This may or may not be an occasional series.
Sometimes while prowling back alleys you find things that don’t bear the light of day, brass ritual cymbal turns out to be a trashcan cover, exotic seafood dinner is really rotten fish guts.
Yet perhaps there’s some truth to these lies.
Here in NYC the sun has gone down. That’s the time to prowl.
I don’t hate lying. I don’t. I’ve had plenty of people in my life who I really loved who were terrible liars, sometimes they lied just for the sake of lying. It was annoying, but I didn’t hate them or try to change them. It wasn’t something that fired me up.
I don’t hate greed either. Frankly, I’m not a very virtuous person in most respects. I don’t make promises for the most part because I don’t want to have to remember to keep them.
Now our national bullhorn is blaring about lies and to the extent it hurts McCain’s chances of becoming President, that’s just fine with me.
But it isn’t the lies that bother me.
In the back alleys there is no high regard for truth or virtue, the view is different. Some atavistic survival sense swirled around with mad curious glee and a burning existence, the priorities are different.
Now don’t get me wrong, without nice clean proper Main Street I couldn’t have my back alleys, no.
The light needs the dark, though, and vice versa. Or maybe the light and the dark aren’t separate at all. Who knows? Not much philosophy in the back alleys.
My arrogant delusions look real pretty in the glowing reflection of those brass cymbals, yeah, and as the white rays of the waxing moon illuminate a stone or two on the cracked pavement and turn them into rare jewels, I say, “No, they are mine, not yours, you don’t deserve them, you can’t have them, they are mine. What I offer is more fun and what you offer is not fun at all.”
In spite and selfishness, spicy vices. In lust and madness, the dark forces of human spirit fire. You can’t have them, they are not yours.
In back alleys trashcan covers can appear as brass ritual cymbals crashing out dissonant songs of existence.
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… on law and order either.
…and I think Stomp.
at least there is a pizza joint open after 11 PM.
You have a way of taking everyday pieces of life, that most people don’t even notice, and show them through a different lens. Thats a good thing.
I’m hoping on the series. 🙂
NPK when I saw the title of your post I free-associated this site: Alley Cats. It is an online book with beautiful photos and stories about kittehs living in the streets. The authors are the Jane Goodalls of the street cat world. They interacted with their subjects and got to know them. It’s really cute but sad too.
Sorry if I’m going OT – but I can’t pass up the chance to post up a cat pic!
…they are just calling different things by the same names. There is philosophy aplenty; it is merely the fiction of those with something greater to protect that refuses to call it by that name.
Of course, as I grow older, I begin to think that perhaps there are no lies. Perhaps what we think are lies are just truths being told in the subtext rather than in the text.
what to say about this piece other than i love it. so visual, so open, i’m there with you!
I love the back alleys’ analogies! Very clever!