The first couple of pages of the novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ contain a bunch of extended metaphors that will extend, in fact, for the next eleven hundred pages or so. This is one of them:
No, thought Eddie Willers, there was nothing disturbing in the sight of the city. It looked as it had always looked.
He walked on, reminding himself that he was late in returning to the office. He did not like the task which he had to perform on his return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but made himself walk faster.
He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhouettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky.
It was the calendar that the mayor of New York had erected last year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day of the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up at a public tower. A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light of this evening’s sunset, the rectangle said: September 2.
Eddie Willers looked away. He had never liked the sight of that calendar. It disturbed him, in a manner he could not explain or define. The feeling seemed to blend with his sense of uneasiness; it had the same quality.
He thought suddenly that there was some phrase, a kind of quotation, that expressed what the calendar seemed to suggest. But he could not recall it. He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it nor dismiss it. He glanced back. The white rectangle stood above the roofs, saying in immovable finality: September 2.
Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable pushcart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright gold carrots and the fresh green of onions. He saw a clean white curtain blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expertly steered. He wondered why he felt reassured—and then, why he felt the sudden, inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the open, unprotected against the empty space above.
When he came to Fifth Avenue, he kept his eyes on the windows of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to buy; but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street; not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty.
The phrase Eddie Willers was trying to remember in that excerpt—he would remember it later—was: Your days are numbered!
*
My days are numbered!
In just about a week I will be doing an exit, stage left, from my suburban lair and starting off on the road back to Dagny Taggart’s world.
Although I’ve lived in the suburb here south of Chicago for more than a decade, I’ve never really felt at home here, never stopped thinking of myself as a city guy. Yesterday morning I flipped on a radio and the station was playing, ‘Subdivisions,’ by Rush. I thought, Yeah, sometimes chance speaks to us...
Although I feel nothing but excitement about getting back to the city, there is one thing about my house here in the subdivision that I’m going to miss: The little garden plots I had along my south sidewalk.
*
When I did my top ten list picturing Taylor Swift naked, I didn’t do any pre-planning. I just started at ten, the most generic image and worked my way down to one with the idea of getting more personal but with no pre-planning of what the final image would be.And all by itself it turned out to be a landscape scene involving the little gardens next to my house.
I posted about something like that happening once before, in my post ‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #5: Shangri-La.
In a writing class, a bunch of us city kids were supposed to write about “our heart’s desire” and our writing teacher noticed that every one of us wrote something that contained a theme of ‘getting back to nature.’
Something about Shangri-La is both lasting and persuasive.
*
As I get ready to start re-locating, I’m selling, donating and throwing away almost everything. (I’ve sold my guitars! Arrrrgh!)
But one thing I will be taking back to the city with me is my cactus garden.
I grew them from seeds.
One of the librarians at our local library—the subdivision’s library—gave me some tips about how to increase my chances of getting the cactuses to flower. I haven’t had the opportunity to try the tips here, but getting my cactus plants to flower will be at the top of my list of things to do when I settle into an apartment back in the city.
Flowers on the cactus plants in the apartment in Chicago.
Shangri-La.
*
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown
Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth
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