Pretty rubble

February 28, 2019 § 1 Comment

The most interesting things have usually not been prettied up much, including people.

It’s kind of like the engine of a car. The exterior is all whored up, but it’s not until you pop the hood that you really get a sense of what’s going on.

Not that I would know how to pop a hood.

But I would know how to amble aimlessly on a clunker bike, far from the non-crowds that were non-stampeding throughout the major attractions of Vienna.

I would know how to take a deliberate wrong turn because the lie of the land looked good.

I would know how to follow a roof-line and look for interesting breaks that promised something different.

I would also know how to look at a tiny sticker on a lamp post and contrast it with the painted lady buildings, the eye candy for the tourists just like me who aren’t really like me at all except, of course, they are, completely.

And I would know how to freeze my ass off, especially that.

I would know how to read the word “fuck” sprayed bold in low relief against a steeple.

I would know how to stop and gaze at the torn hole of a leveled building and its sole remaining, half-rubble pillar.

I would know how to scramble up onto a wall, hold onto an iron grate, and snap a quick non-dick-pic of something much sexier, collapse, decay, festering ferment, heaps of shit dumped in a pile, an embarrassment of failure or the beginning of some grand project, which is always the same thing.

I would know how to shoot a photo wrong-ass backwards into the sun, canceling out the colorful beauty and force-feeding the light into tones of black and gray and dirty white.

I would know how to stand scowling, skeptically, in front of ugly graffiti that someone told someone was art because it was new and no one wanted to admit that it was nonetheless ugly and heartless and stupid because we all have feelings, even fools with spray paint.