Its unedited, and very stream of consciousness, but here it is...
9.13.09 11:03 p.m.
The view atop a 17 level condo facing the downtown cluster and its surrounding sprawl of Houston, Texas draws alive. I was born here, but I have never liked this place - its big, dirty, car infested, seemling dark and seedy. This reputation has been
furthered by closed, suited up deals made in the skyline before me. Big Oil's home is glass and steel of the pure and cheap and functional variety - not the awe inspiring, soul-and-purpose fed architecture of New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong or numerous other weath cities. Yes I am amused and pleasured by this city's skyline and its beauty. The twinkling lights, sirens, and straight lines of the super city placed over miles and miles all cumulating to the great, compact building cluster of Downtown seems like a feudal castle eyeing a massive fiefdom. And I am sure this is how many poor and normal, struggling for the top of society, feel about the buildings towering over. The dealings of those rooms - that I have seen, as a tourist, decored in drab 80s oil boom "texas art" and other tacky eccentricities - have the comfort of a fat, 10-gallon cowboy hat wearing, plaid suit bearing, cigar choking, 55 year old beer and meat gut driven man clutching to gobs of dirty money --- oh, warm as a fireplace on christmas eve, huh? These white walls inside hold stories not ever to be really told of ill mannered oil-for-food programs, "regime" changes, war, poverty, and genocide of the planet. And all for the invisible dream and non reality of money and greed.
But like all expectations - the story is so much more real than we know. My left side view from this exquisite bird's perch is the colossal medical center of Houston, a city of itself and city of hope for so many. The World's Cutting Edge Medicine lives here and even my very sick grandfather's hope is fluctuated here through high technology and advancements and tests and all that well.... hospital stuff (most of it ill never understand). It warms my heart to know a couple is welcoming a child into this world - another concoction of atoms with all the possibility to achieve beauty, to add more and perhaps take less. But it also perplexes my understanding of the other couple at the end of the ward, who are thinking they are losing one another by misunderstanding the freedom of death.
But that well lit, left view of the smaller cluster doesn't hold my attention. The downtown skyline commands my piqued interest - not the subsidiary shopping complex known by a cheap italian rip off name called the Gallaria or the MediCity, however beautiful they may be. I may be going out on a limb here, but this beautiful cold air is telling my soul to feel something here. I feel that if this modern granduer in front of me can cause so much change in this planet, then our global conciousness is able to shift so much more and in a direction so positive, that the atrocities of Big Oil in this town will pale in comparison to what we can achieve.
Can cities last forever? No.
We have seen Athens fall in the pages of our textbooks and our respective rural villages drift reluctantly into bigger cities for uncertain dreams of misguided prosperity. Oh how much awesomeness can be done on any latitude and longitude of the globe! But now is most important. Now ther are lights, people and yes - reluctantly, cars - in this particular city's skyline. And there is love and hope and an underlying current not seen but known;
One that is more powerful than all the energy powering this city.
One that resides in the silence between the sirens, in the light behind the bulb of the streetlight, in the deep of the night walker.
One that is readily accessable.
We are here, we are now.
teepee.
