the Forgetting Ghost
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
New York
My memory of my homeland is fading fast the longer I’m in Manhattan. It feels like I’ve lived here for years and it’s barely been two weeks since I arrived in the city. I felt this sensation as I made my way back to the studio this evening from the grocery store. All the buildings and the streets in this area of Chinatown now seem so familiar to me that I’m sure I’ve lived here before in some bizarre mirror world. As I slowly plodded along the garbage-strewn streets filled with mysterious green liquids, I feel so at home suddenly, I fear I’m forgetting my former life. The faces of my loved ones are becoming vague impressions of the originals and the places I loved at home are smoky phantoms that I cannot fully recall or see clearly.
I have become one of the millions traveling these streets and in doing so, have become part of a greater organism that threatens to absorb me into it’s genetics. I’m just another tile in the subway; another jaundiced taxi on the street or just one more of many billion pieces of graffiti scrawled across the landscape of this metropolis. I’m submerged into a greater consciousness that insists on individuals to make it a dynamic and chaotic whole.
My mood today is light and undefined. I spent so much time running errands and thinking of opportunities that I almost forgot to enjoy the simple pleasure of another day in New York City. It seems so unreal at times as I’m walking through traffic in front of the Flatiron Building that I feel as invisible as I do in Chinatown. I feel like some spectre gliding down the avenues only recognized by those for an eye for the unseen and internal. I’m transparent to all and it gives me the luxury of looking deep into those who pass me by, unaware of my ghostly gaze.
My new life is of many flavours….some days sour or bland.
…and some days it is the sweetest taste I’ve ever felt on my outstretched tongue. Like tropical rain.
Love,
Wallace
New York
My memory of my homeland is fading fast the longer I’m in Manhattan. It feels like I’ve lived here for years and it’s barely been two weeks since I arrived in the city. I felt this sensation as I made my way back to the studio this evening from the grocery store. All the buildings and the streets in this area of Chinatown now seem so familiar to me that I’m sure I’ve lived here before in some bizarre mirror world. As I slowly plodded along the garbage-strewn streets filled with mysterious green liquids, I feel so at home suddenly, I fear I’m forgetting my former life. The faces of my loved ones are becoming vague impressions of the originals and the places I loved at home are smoky phantoms that I cannot fully recall or see clearly.
I have become one of the millions traveling these streets and in doing so, have become part of a greater organism that threatens to absorb me into it’s genetics. I’m just another tile in the subway; another jaundiced taxi on the street or just one more of many billion pieces of graffiti scrawled across the landscape of this metropolis. I’m submerged into a greater consciousness that insists on individuals to make it a dynamic and chaotic whole.
My mood today is light and undefined. I spent so much time running errands and thinking of opportunities that I almost forgot to enjoy the simple pleasure of another day in New York City. It seems so unreal at times as I’m walking through traffic in front of the Flatiron Building that I feel as invisible as I do in Chinatown. I feel like some spectre gliding down the avenues only recognized by those for an eye for the unseen and internal. I’m transparent to all and it gives me the luxury of looking deep into those who pass me by, unaware of my ghostly gaze.
My new life is of many flavours….some days sour or bland.
…and some days it is the sweetest taste I’ve ever felt on my outstretched tongue. Like tropical rain.
Love,
Wallace
posted by Wallace Ryan at 3:28 PM
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