From a Rooftop In Manhattan

To Market

I left the flat today to find food for the week. In my home village, there was an indoor market. Lines of items for everyone: meats. fish. eggs. 

In the city, every corner has a shop master selling what all shop masters 

sell – expensive items of poor quality to those that venture no further than they must. One must go further to find a good price. To find fresh meats, a person may find a meat market. Fish? A separate market in a separate area of the city early in the morning. A bean? A stand that sells them. Loaf bread, in a still different bizarre.

The citizens move from shop to shop with aluminum carts; personal wheeled-baskets, and it is glorious to watch them as they move along the street. Food, for these people, is a destination three stations away. The meal: a ritual, a processional along the main traffic ways of the metropolitan neighborhoods. 

Eating is a deliberate act. Finding the meal is equally deliberate.

Where once we carried items on our shoulders, our backs, we now push them around like a showcase of personal delights. The flavor of survival in the city is in our baskets. And yet, we are left quite vulnerable and exposed without our own transportation. Where does one direct the eyes with so many neighbors close – on the streets, on the trains, in shops? Our baskets become the object of our eyes without cars to hide them in. Our imaginations create plots involving our neighbors to keep us entertained, where once we ate together.

A Chill In the Heat

I’ve caught some sort of chill on my journey. The sound in my ears grows more muffled by the days and I cough deeply in the evening. I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised to catch a neighbor’s ailment in such tight quarters. I do not know how many problems air carriers might create, but I trust this condition will not cause me trouble for long.

But I am nervous of the heat. It has been beyond something serious here in the weeks before I arrived. The citizens say in the month of August, things will be much worse. The stone and iron of the city will absorb every degree of the sun, and everyone will sweat as they have today. I am not used these thick breaths; I do not know how I will deal with August.

In the evening, the air cools, but it grows heavy from the sea. There is rarely a breeze. Where I once lived, it grew wet in the morning. The grasses would sag with the drops of dew. In the afternoons, the grasses would run up the fields in waves with the wind. They would blow right through the nearby farms, waves cascading over each other for miles. But there are no fields here; there are just buildings that reach higher for the sun.

All things as they are, I’m optimistic my condition will improve.

Arriving To Port

I have arrived to the city later than expected. It seems Air Travel in the American Empire has become a token of its general carelessness. Its travel ports are plagued by constructions and routine delays, while carriers continually fluctuate prices to accord with the profits of the season. Customer service, the least of any concern to a big ticket provider. These days, to arrive on time for a good price is nearly out of the question.

And of myself, I had made twice the mistake, choosing to Fly a Major into a hub under perpetual construction. The airmen stalled us a good eighth day to circle ‘round a big storm northwest of the city. And with lander gates full from delays and big gales, we waited another near sixty just to exit into the port’s mouth.

And of course, my bundles nowhere... No clean robes, oils, body sauces or undergarments. I am left stinking in the heat for 36 hours, stuck underground waiting. A day passes with no word from the travel group. A second half day.

Finally, by Perfect Delivery my belongings arrive. Sandals. Linens. Shirts. Two wooden boxes filled with things from home: a rock from the west riverbank, a length of pink ribbon, a stamp and wax for letters. I heft the canvas sack onto my back by the straps and move to the steel doors of the community building.

The brass lock on the door is of poor quality and fights at the turn. One must fiddle with it. Sometimes one must fiddle with it for a good period of time. In fact, everything seems to require a little trick or extra turn to be of use. If one must be a citizen to enter the city – to gain all of this, I wonder what I’ve gained of myself…