Weeds Are Not Pretty

I have frightened myself once again, this time simply by going to Lake Bellobrutto.

The lake itself does not scare me. It is not even really a lake. No, what frightens me is the fact that I went there yet again and have come to admire certain aspects of it. That is, my fear emanates from acceptance. Acceptance of Lake Bellobrutto. Acceptance of my fate.

Have I become inured to this despicable isle of the damned? Have I become complacent in my heart? My soul? My mind? My pancreas?

Can I write something that does not end in a question mark?

Yes. I can and I contemplated and I felt as though I have become one of the locals in the sense that I came and I contemplated and did not find myself in contempt.

After all, this non-lake was as ugly as ever. In fact, they--They being the powers that control all aspects of life upon this non-nation in the sea--have managed to make it even uglier.

With the magic of asphalt and concrete and pressed-gravel and the buzz-saw of the chainsaw, they--excuse me, They--have reduced the place to but an oval track with a body of muddy algae-infested water inside of it.

How attractive!

And yet, I hardly noticed.

I have become so accepting of this place, this fake lake park, that it scarcely registered. Instead I found myself admiring--yes, I said ADMIRING!--the flowering weeds.

Wow!

Why these are weeds and not flowers, I do not know. It is more than just a matter of semantics, I imagine. No doubt it has something to do with agriculture and dominion of the land and a sense of what is what and who says what is what. It is why we are humans and not rodents yet we breath the same air and eat the same comestibles and pee in the same cup.

Yet, at that moment, I was not thinking "weeds" or really even "flowers". I was blissfully mindless other than my visual appreciation.

But then came along a woman and a child. The child, a little girl, stopped somewhat near to me--no doubt to the consternation of the mother. (I assumed it was her mother, though I could also assume that she was quite lost, bringing her child to Lake Bellobrutto in the brutish daylight and near a prisoner-person like me--normally, almost all the denizens avoid me, as I avoid them.)

"Look," the girl said, eyeing the same wild grouping of blossoms I had just viewed. "How pretty!"

"Weeds are not pretty," the mother said and grasped the child's frail hand and led her down the newly-minted asphalt path where they could properly admire fencing and posts and drains.

That is when I became conscious that what I was looking at were weeds. When I became self-conscious of my consciousness, or lack of conscious, that here I was at Lake Bellobrutto once again, acting like any other zombieish-humanoid upon this agricultural/human-remanded isle.


Ah.


Look!

Here are some pretty flowers for you:

And here is a butterfly--or a moth; whichever you prefer:

And here is a dead butterfly or moth:

And there you have it.

Goodbye from Soybean Island

Longnarrow Park

I have found yet another new park to visit. New to me, at least. And now visited:

Longnarrow Park is located in Soybean Island City, west and a jog north of downtown.

I'd like to report that it is a park named after H. Wadsworth Longnarrow, a literary figure from this island. But, alas, that is impossible. There are no literary figures from this place. There are Elite Elders and Businessmen and Corporate Heads who are much revered within this cloistered society, but you will never know their names. Certainly not publicly. No. Here on Soybean Island, names are not used to name. There is no history here. Only secrecy.

But, the park . . .

Really, not much to see here:

Grass. Pavement. Trees. Boredom.

But of course, my intrepid eye finds the things that need to be found.

Found and documented and reported upon.

Such as this:

And this:

And thus:

Well, perhaps those are not the best examples . . .

But here. Look. What park on this forsaken isle would be complete without some blaring-orange plastic fencing? Some object of capture and control?

And not just that, but to have a bench placed so that one can view--up close and personal--the fencing.

A front row seat!

I remain amazed.


But, for me, I would rather investigate the trees:

Though certainly you can see for yourself without comment what I see nonetheless I will comment anyway.

Yes.

The violence visited upon these arboreal subjects is obvious. Some are recent scars, most scars are of long ago, no doubt inflicted upon them when they were young and innocent.

How sad.

Perhaps I had better show you a couple of images that are not quite so disturbing, to take the sour stinging taste out of your silent mouths:

There. That's better? Is it? Huh?

Does it suit you to a:

?



But of course, on Soybean Island, even in a seemingly innocuous place like Longnarrow Park, one is always reminded what is really going on:

Industry

and Poverty.

No doubt within the thin walls of the factory slave laborers toil for slavish consumer products.

And no doubt within the decrepit walls of the termite-ridden house, the cadaverous bodies of the workers huddle together in fitful fists of hungry sleep between the long shifts at the factory.

No doubt.

It should make me be a smidgen grateful for my position as An Object of Curiosity. It should bring a mouthful of shame to my very being that at least I get to wander with a modicum of freedom and self-determination upon this prisoner isle. Yes, it should.

But it doesn't.


Longnarrow Park--no more to report.

Oneninefiveseven over and out and Goodbye from Soybean Island

A Short Walk in Snailtown

Yes, with nothing much to do I went to Snailtown. And with nothing much in Snailtown I took a short walk. One could take a long walk but then one would, most likely, not be in Snailtown any more.

The above is a snail without its shell. Or a slug. Or a hock of phlegm from some unfortunate student . . . No, it must be a Soybean Island Snail (Fighting Snail, Transcendental Snail) who has had its shell lost or stolen.


For those of you who forget--and who among us does not forget or attempt to forget or hopes to forget--Snailtown is actually AEZ I, that is, Academic Economic Zone Number One. It is affectionally called Snailtown, or derisively called Snailtown, depending on who is doing the calling. To most it is just acceptingly called Snailtown, because that's what it is called and they know better than to think for themselves or to ask questions.

Anyway, as I said, it was a short walk, behind the main streets of activity, and here is what I saw:

A tree with a face. And a hat.

Some fenced-in flowers. Dangerous flowers, I guess.

A blank sign with a stick. There is, however and if you look closely, some mysterious graffiti scratched into the sign. Hmmm and more hmmm.

And one more hmmm . . .

Good drainage!


Snailtown is not my cup of tea. It is overrun with young humans, young human prisoners who do not realize that they are prisoners and that their education is a re-education. They will never leave their studies, unless it is in a box. Or a bag. Nonetheless it is my duty as a secret reporter to reveal parts of Snailtown, just as I must reveal parts of SIC and Cornana and The Homesteads and Ste. Abattoir des Chevres Pre de la Mer, as well as Academic Economic Zone Number Two and--lest we forget, how we would love to forget--Stalag Ranville!

More:

Ah. A rusted post and rusted fence.

Criminal-minded grass sod being kept at bay by more rusty fencing.


Now here is a recent phenomenon:

The main street of Snailtown has new growth. What amounts to high-rises for a place like Soybean Island. They have gone up quickly. A very strange thing. I'm guessing there is a large and new influx of young renditioned prisoners. Most of them--by the looks of things--are from Asian countries. So, there is a sudden need to house them during their perpetual re-education.

This building has a certain jailhouse-patterned chic to it. No?

I had to be careful photographing them--very dangerous--so I did it from the back alley . . . This sudden boom of young captives represents a boon for the coffers of the island. Well, not the island per se, but for the Elite of The Elites, for the operatives of The Apparatus. This influx of youth means money money money! Much more money than they make on an old salt like myself.

I will have to come back and do an expose' of all this new housing here at The University of Soybean Island. I will. And I shall.

Someday.

After I visit another new-to-me park and after I continue with my expose' on public art.

So many expose's and so much time . . .

Yes.

And yes, I must sign off.

Goodbye from Soybean Island