What
I saw from the hillside overlooking the new Porter Ranch development,
San Fernando Valley, November 1, 1997
Little
white cars crawling away to work and shop.
Little
matchstick houses huddled along the ridge, as though that would save
them when the clouds mass and the hurricane of wind and rain explodes
them to bits of plastic and melting stucco and washes it all down the
gully, to pile up against the culvert dam, smashed beyond
recognition. (Never mind, K Mart is open 24-7, we can get more.)
The
flyaway tiled roofs stuck on like afterthoughts from a set of Lincoln
Logs, will go first, making the air a blizzard of red dust, deposited
evenly over a square mile of land. Great machines will roll over the
Barbie bits and the Nintendo buttons and the Jeep Cherokee headlights
and the exploded picture tubes and the plaster statues of David and
the fire retardant drapes and all the glass and plastic, crushing
and grinding it down to an indigestible
sparkling colorless pyramid of trash.
Truckloads
will carry it to the incinerators and the
melted remains
will be molded into cubes fifty feet square.
Hueys will airlift them to Century
City where they will be dropped, one at a
time, until a huge tower rises up, visible
for miles, teetering on the smashed Broadway Bullocks Macys Robinsons
Nordstroms May Co beneath
it.
From
the hills, a glint can be seen from
the tower on a clear day. Rain will soak
the ground and fire release the seeds
and animals drop their nurturing shit, and
when the people
who hunt and gather die, their bodies will
return to the soil, and the land will slowly heal.
Yes!
