I used to call
it the industrial corridor. As much as it changes, or though many years and
even decades come and roll over it and about it,- there is some proverbial
heart of the matter that remains the same. The long stretches of road, wide and
slightly vexatious for the barrels, the oil, the often broken curbing. Tow
trucks like vultures wait, or wide shipping bay doors. Old motors, their
casings tattered, scarred, one proudly yellow, red, blue, - every other color.
There are even fields, and of course cables, hydro and phone lines. These come
through from far away, announce themselves like a forever spider’s web, and
then continue further to the impossibly labyrinthine innards of the easterly
city. The men, - from every country on earth imaginable- . Welders, machinists,
drivers, motor repairmen, detailers, all the rest, all the various tasks,
callings, vocations. Some of the windows are new whilst others grime covered.
There was once a bakery there, and the bakery turned into a place that made
truck parts, and the truck parts place has since turned into a transport
company. It’s the same sky, - blue, at times overcast. In the middle winter the
snow covers the wood, shingles, metal, gratings, streets, buses, old lost or
discarded washers, nuts, bolts, pieces of wire, housings, casts, strangely
shaped trucks, tires, and the broken bricks and pieces of glass. On the insides- lunchrooms, lockers, oil, shelves, drill presses, lathes, testing pits, chains, hoppers, copper, steel, gaskets, wrench, welding rod, glove, hose, pipe, ohms counter, hydraulics, galvanized plate, painting booth, tanks, chalk, drums, ties, lights, sand, grease, keys, boxes, boards, banter, memory, other other other other other...There is a
creek, a small one in width but it runs the entire corridor much like the wires
in the air. A lady used to live there, - an aged one with a cart, and the
foreman used to bring her out water and tell her to stop drinking from the
chemical creek because she would become ill. It’s not known when or how she one
day stopped coming around. In my imagination I once thought of her as a
benevolent witch of the corridor, - casting spells at the nightime, a sort of
odd guardian or gatekeeper to those streets and the lands beyond. In the bright
day, so many years later, the creek and its discarded pallets, the feral plants
and flowers that grow through cracks in the cement and whose ancestors live
somehow always, - are still there. It could be 1982 or 1993 or even 1975 or
almost anything. Wire and sky, creek and brick, curb and window and other- all
not bound really by time. As real as it all is, it also seems astral,
ephemeral, dreamlike, vaguely mystical, and apart. I used to call it the
industrial corridor. I suppose that is as good a name as any.
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