From Our Vantage Point

Intricate hell
The city itself spanned the horizon, living, breathing, never sleeping. As the sky faded to orange, lights began to scatter themselves across the ground like the stars scatter the heavens and from our vantage point we could sit and watch it all. Somewhere in that intricate mess people were putting their kids to bed, sitting down to watch television and subjecting themselves to the humanity hole that is the internet. Somewhere in that intricate hell people were putting their fingers down on piano keys and guitar strings, putting pens to papers and putting dreams into ideas into actions. Somewhere in that intricate city people were killing each other, kissing each other, fucking each other. From our vantage point we could sit and watch it all.

Atoms and limbs
We didn’t see it coming, at least not initially. I don’t think anybody really did. Sure, there were the visionaries and the thinkers, those who spouted warning of empires collapsing, oceans loosing their salt and people jumping off the moon. But there was far too much excess haze and far too much going for us to allow anybody to really sit down and sort through the fog of crushed atoms and limbs and see what was bearing down on us like the Enola Gay. How could they? Could you?

A mental romance
After the first time we had slept together we had woken up to a bright morning and a fresh breeze softly pushing her bedroom blinds, tapping against the window. We had held each other and told ourselves that together we could take on the world and from that day on we never looked back. It was this aggressive, mental romance that landed us in that city and in that thirty-third floor apartment. It was a mutual craving for a cigarette and fresh air that put us out on our balcony that evening, surveying the expanse of buildings, rolling hills and valleys of structure, built up and built down and built in.

So many people scurrying
So many people talking on cell phones, buying things, driving from one place to the next, being and trying to look important. So many people scurrying. A society, devoid of heart, spinning in circles of profit and built to break people down into consumers from birth. Stock markets crashing and soaring, inventions and patents and pills that make you stronger, better looking, better fucking, better thinking. Self-image is immortalized on magazine covers and billboard advertisements, words and images designed to plug into your brain and grow like weeds. An entire generation as rodents and worker bees, hard working in their physical redundancy yet lazy in the head, content with allowing their thoughts to be controlled by discerning propaganda. A society at loss of heart.

Travelers
Somewhere, though, somewhere beneath the synthetic fluorescence, thrives something real, something jagged and painful and naturally beautiful. These people they tend to wander, not satisfied with sitting in the bloody mess they were born in for the rest of their lives. They tend to hit the road and meet new people, learning new languages and songs as they go, writing it all down, transcribing their thoughts onto paper and for some eventually into audio and visual ingenuity beyond the capacities of most. Many of these travelers don’t know each other directly, but indirectly they are connected through experience and art and a driving will to help and better their own people. These travelers understand that humanity is one race struggling to survive on the dazzlingly harsh planet given to them by the gods, rather than many peoples struggling against each other. They understand their roles as the protectors of their planet because even though the gods supplied them with it, it is up to them to keep it alive. These pockets of people exist everywhere, in every generation and in every walk of life, in coffee bars and basements around the world, writing words and music, and they are connected. This how we met and why I loved her and why she loved me. We were travelers both, thinkers, writers. We could take on the world together.

God himself was flicking switches
The sun had just escaped our view, dipping below the city line, when we felt the first rush of air, followed by a flash of light in the distance and a thunder that shook our building. We stood up and our hands touched, immediately grasping onto one another. Again, a rush of air, a flash, a rumbling, and then darkness. The city turned off in sections, you could hear it, everything electric shutting down as if God himself was flicking switches. Bells chimed and a harmonica played along in a love song in our heads and we held each other in our newfound darkness. The stars were accented now, against the black sky and the black earth, with no big city lights to drown them out, and they were falling on our city. From our vantage point we could sit and watch it all.

In the hands of the survivors
We sat back down and lit up another cigarette to share and watched our city be subjected to the wrath of the heavens. It was the end, we knew, there was no more fighting it. So many of us had believed that if we persisted, if we worked hard enough we could make a change and eventually it would break out into secular communities all over the world. Boy, were we ever naïve. Change we made, yes, and we did affect a great many of people, kids at home in their bedrooms, people we didn’t know, and also friends and family members. But what were fighting against was too well accepted as being good for humanity and what we were fighting for was not understood by humanity, although we would argue again and again that what we were fighting for was humanity itself. So we sat and watched, me and her, and a little percussion and a violin was added to our bells, the harmonica fading into a new chorus and verse. More heavenly bodies screamed out of the sky and slammed into our buildings and our city slowing was lit up again by fires. A building close to us was hit and we were covered in dust and debris. We headed back inside and watched through our reflections behind a closed window. One after the other, crashing, destroying, skyscrapers falling into the streets in roaring fire and rubble. Who would have known, who could have guessed? As our apartment ripped apart like a giant, broken zipper forced apart, we held each other and knew that somewhere out there, in the mass of confusion and wreckage, there would be survivors. In the hands of these survivors would be a responsibility to build a phoenix of a civilization, rising from the ashes of one that failed, and in the hands of these survivors is where we sit today.