God knows what kinda fucked-up mess would stain these Boulevards if it wasn't for these trees, standing in their own unobtrusive, dignified way, softening the jagged edges of this Concrete-Mash-Up!! For people get mangled here in the litter strewn Streets & Avenues that reek of fried chicken. Here, amongst the Crescents & Terraces, damage is wreaked on Tender Hearts & Uncomprehending Minds! Maybe the countless rows of disshevelled Victorian Villas in Hackney (where the plaster has peeled long since from once resplendent neo-classical porticoes and where the gardens are now filled with black rubbish bags, empty cola cans & dandelions) are a microcosm of what happens on a citywide scale where the slow erosion of neglect comes to play also on human beings and eats away at notions like Respect & Dignity, Kindness & Sociability. And so what happens if you haven't got whispering leaves to stir atavistic memories and soothe the woebegone soul? In Londonville, remember, there is a Whole-Big-Heavy-Heap of Bricks & Mortar and Steel & Glass sitting on top of what once was Mother Nature's Rich, Brown Valley Earth! London is a Big, Dirty Squatter!!
Someday yet to wheel about this whole goddam Man-Made-Muddle is gonna be REDUNDANT and everything is gonna be beaten back & weathered down & swallowed up! Until then things have a habit of staying just where they are until someone or something comes along n picks 'em up n shunts them along to Postcodes new! It was in this way that London used to be in other places : The Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's, Buckingham Palace - all use Portland Stone from Dorset; The Tower of London uses stones from Kent & France; Tower Bridge uses granite from Cornwall. It occurs to me now that all of these stones just mentioned were formed when the land masses they were part of were sliding across parts of the Globe other than the locations they are at present. Indeed, the London Clay that the City itself rests upon was formed by marine & land deposits in shallow sub-tropical seas...so all that stuff that got washed out and deposited must have came from somewhere else before ending up in thick layers waiting to be turned into bricks to be carried in hods by burly Victorian labourers before then being turned into places like Kentish Town & Kensal Green, Hammersmith & Highgate.....& just think on the incalculable amount of Welsh slate currently insitu atop all those houses in London's vast Granny-Knot of Roads & Streets!
It's fitting then to think that most Londoners themselves started out as being from somewhere else. Strange to consider that the Pre-Fab Escarpments of the High-Rise and the Smoky & Sooty Rookeries of Slum Tenements delivered up some kinda scant sanctuary for the rootless & homeless from Blighted & Benighted, faraway corners of our World ; yet they did! And so here we all are huddled round the banks of the river as it wends it's time-worn passage to the sea; imagining as we go about our scrawny human business that the walls that hem us in are somehow permanent. And yet, even this London is on the move!!
10 Million people, 20 Million feet, 200 Million Toes; Swarming, Flocking, Plodding, Tramping the hard, faceless streets imperceptibly moving little bits of London detritus from here to there....or maybeez it is the wind huffs n puffs down these hollow canyons scudding things along.....or maybe it's the rains that fall & wash something along to somewheres else....& so it goes....and by the time the Sun's had enough and decides to call it quits for the day & clock off, London isn't really the same as it was when it started out that morning......but no one notices because there's food to be gotten, eaten, deposited; drink to be drunk; sex to be searched for; laughter to be enjoyed; tears to be cried; desperate screams to be howled; old lives to fizzle out n new ones to be pushed into being.......
And so the big Meaningless, Pointless, Goal-less, Destination-less wheel of life grinds on taking every one of us living creations round with it until the day arrives when the space we fill up is gonna fall apart & all the atoms that constitute what we are are gonna say 'So Long, It's Been Good To Know Ya' to one another and go lookin' for new forms to become part of.......Sometimes it is that that thought chills ya to the very core of your being but right now, up on my Squat City roof glorying in the Sun and listening to the gentle rustle of the feathery foliage and faraway hum of planes high above me....it's....kinda....errrrr.....BEAUTIFUL!!!
PEACE, LOVE N COSMIC FELICITATIONS MY FELLOW BLOGGERS!!!!
THIS IS YIR SQUAT CITY IDLER IN HIS SQUAT CITY IDYLL SIGNING OFF........
