Through the Eyes of a Stranger
Or someone stranger than you anyways.
I have lived here for just over two years and when I look around I realise that this is still not home. Home is where the heart is and I misplaced that a while ago. When you're a kid the place you grew up was magical all the best and worst things happened there, demons and wizards and all that kind of thing. Accepting somewhere as home is all in the mind, quite literally. Home is somewhere you are at ease, somewhere you feel welcome and want to be, somewhere where dreams and nightmares can come true but it's ok either way cos the people you love are with you through it no matter what. Home is where the memories are made and kept. All and none of this makes my current abode something other than home.
When I drive through town, or walk to the shops this is the town I see, I don't know if my town is any less real or skewed by prejudice than what is physically and geographically here but visit this place and your own mind will decide.
The dreams of hopeless children fly like litter caught in the autumn breeze, alays just out of reach but glinting and fluttering enough to catch the wandering eye one last time.
Even in the sunshine the town is masked in a haze of dust, it adds an almost old or nostalgic quality to the light; like an old movie of the world seen through the Cyclops' eye of the projector in a disused cinema. The dirt touches everything, living or otherwise, it seeps from the very pores of the grimy buildings slowing the ships as they crawl into the quayside. No wonder they leave so soon.
The town is dying, propped up by some vague malformed distant hope of a ferry port to the continent. Business comes and goes like the ships but regeneration plans continue to be made. Foolishly. Travel to the continent by flight is far cheaper & quicker so how will the new port change the fate of this sinking town.
It's a hotspot for unemployment, immigration, violent crime, teenage pregnancy; come to think of it the only thing this town isnt a hotspot for is good weather. Still, the domestic residencies of this place continue to increase like an infestation as heavy in numbers it causes it's own downfall. The roads are clogged and slow like congested arteries in a fat cat corporate lawyer. Waiting to give up the ghost completely. The council budget is over stretched like the incomes of the poverty line families that reside here. Even the electrical grid and water/sewage systems struggle to cope. Frequent power dips and blackouts blight the locals whilst flooding is on the rise (excuse the pun).
Yet this semi-derelict, industrial waste site is home to over 70,000 people. Most as hopeless and apathetic as the town. Hell is what you make of it. But I think even Satan couldn't do as a good a job as the elected council and MP.
I have lived here for just over two years and when I look around I realise that this is still not home. Home is where the heart is and I misplaced that a while ago. When you're a kid the place you grew up was magical all the best and worst things happened there, demons and wizards and all that kind of thing. Accepting somewhere as home is all in the mind, quite literally. Home is somewhere you are at ease, somewhere you feel welcome and want to be, somewhere where dreams and nightmares can come true but it's ok either way cos the people you love are with you through it no matter what. Home is where the memories are made and kept. All and none of this makes my current abode something other than home.
When I drive through town, or walk to the shops this is the town I see, I don't know if my town is any less real or skewed by prejudice than what is physically and geographically here but visit this place and your own mind will decide.
The dreams of hopeless children fly like litter caught in the autumn breeze, alays just out of reach but glinting and fluttering enough to catch the wandering eye one last time.
Even in the sunshine the town is masked in a haze of dust, it adds an almost old or nostalgic quality to the light; like an old movie of the world seen through the Cyclops' eye of the projector in a disused cinema. The dirt touches everything, living or otherwise, it seeps from the very pores of the grimy buildings slowing the ships as they crawl into the quayside. No wonder they leave so soon.
The town is dying, propped up by some vague malformed distant hope of a ferry port to the continent. Business comes and goes like the ships but regeneration plans continue to be made. Foolishly. Travel to the continent by flight is far cheaper & quicker so how will the new port change the fate of this sinking town.
It's a hotspot for unemployment, immigration, violent crime, teenage pregnancy; come to think of it the only thing this town isnt a hotspot for is good weather. Still, the domestic residencies of this place continue to increase like an infestation as heavy in numbers it causes it's own downfall. The roads are clogged and slow like congested arteries in a fat cat corporate lawyer. Waiting to give up the ghost completely. The council budget is over stretched like the incomes of the poverty line families that reside here. Even the electrical grid and water/sewage systems struggle to cope. Frequent power dips and blackouts blight the locals whilst flooding is on the rise (excuse the pun).
Yet this semi-derelict, industrial waste site is home to over 70,000 people. Most as hopeless and apathetic as the town. Hell is what you make of it. But I think even Satan couldn't do as a good a job as the elected council and MP.
posted by stunted at 4:09 AM
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