The Battle for Bed-Stuy has turned

A house for the taking! The psychological battle I've been waging for the past 3 months is climaxed. The still is dizzy. A new civility rises, unbounded by the reality of section 8, subsidized housing. The sandpaper removed, I'm almost rendered blind with the lack of gravity.


I've been spying their droppings on the sidewalk; the things that stay behind. For at least the past week. Maybe two. Then sometime Sunday afternoon the house fell quiet. The vibrations of life (a treat for tattered skin, say the vedic monks) absent from all but our garret.

I heard curly and shiny trespassing on the abandoned nest that night.

clp, clp, clp.
"huh, well it has higher ceilings"
clp, clp.
"ugh, but the bathroom's vomitific. Red light on pink tile does not relax the sphincter"
clp, clp, clp, clp, clp, clp
"bigger closets, oh, here's your room, kinda"
"yeah, the floor's are kinda gross"
"yeah, it kind of smells like urine"
click.

That little 'Rican girl. And her sister. They didn't go to school, they were just here. And their mom, with the screechy contralto. They just aren't here.


What remains, a long festering estate. A whole new era.

the cult of personality

I confess I had the opportunity of freedom

I did. Proving my long held assertions of curly and shiny's incompetance, a fortnight past, as they were removing the large bags of bottles and card so long collected in the kitchen I too could have experienced the sandy rough concrete of urbanity on my supple salmon paws. Alas I faltered. And not just out of propriety. Yes, there inevitably would have been a scene -- bumbling, confusement, not my style -- but what lies outside? Why abandon my bourgeious kingdom for the harsh darwinism of a world unchecked by privilege. Though I dmit I do crave society, passionately. The luxury of discussing this tiltering world, it makes my desire to realize these visions of social splendor that conjure in skydreams out the window sharp as a knife of glass. I must speak with the people; we must come to agreements on the machinations of this hallowed world to fully rise above its shortcomings.

Though history is made of leaders, prophets, and messiahs, that is only history. I am what history has crafted. I am now.

the manifesto drops: Spring 2007
the revolution begins: immediately thereafter