the end of a system of things (extract) - henning lundkvist

In the waiting, windless dark, he pressed into the building-front shadows along the Boulevard. Breathing softly, the automatic poised and ready in his hand, he advanced, gliding over the night-cool concrete past ravaged clothing shops, drug and ten-cent stores, their windows shattered, their doors ajar and swinging. The city, painted in the cold moonlight, was an immense graveyard; the tall, white tombstone buildings thrust up from the silent pavement, shadow-carved and lonely. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. He threaded his dim way through the labyrinthine city with the aid of map and compass - traversing rooms and corridors in every stage of ruin or preservation, clambering up ramps, crossing upper floors and bridges and clambering down again, encountering choked doorways and piles of debris, taking false leads and retracing his way. The perspectives of the past and future opened before him, the foundations of society disclosed by it's ruins - overturned metal corpses of trucks, buses, and automobiles littered the streets, and above his head, rows of splintered display bulbs gaped - sharp glass teeth in wooden jaws. His world was damp and lightless; it was narrow and its cold stone walls pressed in upon him as he moved. He halted, gazed at the monuments for what seemed like an eternity.

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YouTube | October 9, 2007

Tags:. .clothing. .aid. .map. .glass. .display