#meshwire | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kendrixtermina · 2 years ago

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(serial experiments ~ the backrooms)

level 0, baseline:

It has been my custom to linger at the edges of things,

to stay away from where there’s too many eyes,

too many voices,

too many observations constraining the possible values for my existence.

I rarely ever sit down in the busy part of the restaurant,

or in the crowded parts of lecture hands -

if its possible, I’d attend over my laptop,

or send a message rather than phone.

I prefer to run my errands a night,

when I’m less likely to run into my neighbors.

It’s not like I can’t venture in further, if needed, but,

let’s just say that, when trying to run a simulation,

it helps to minimize the objects one must render

I do like to stand and watch sometimes, though.

The sight of the city lights seen through broad windows,

vaguely framed by the outlines of a rather used, lived-in room,

the subtly different shades of light painting a mosaic outside the glass,

letting me know its denizens are probably somewhere out there.

level 1, mild:

Have you ever gone to a busy place

when it was abandoned at night?

The light all different from how you’re used to seeing it falling?

Empty schools at night time or,

public squares vacant.

Endless stretching parking lots,

or corridors that tempt your shadow further

down their glittering smooth linoleum wars.

Some inherent, man-made thinness in train stations or

even your own bedroom,

if you awaken at a time when you would normally be at work.

Crumbling places, taken back by time.

A corridor in a hospital, maybe,

the floor tiles and the stream of yellowed lights

one ever chasing the other as it gets lost into the vanishing point

an empty office space devoid of furniture or,

a subway tunnel, perhaps,

that may in olden days have easily doubled as a bomb shelter.

Some sort of public room, a clubhouse or vacation place perhaps,

Something or another about about a dead mall.

Maybe you could still buy ice cream in the parlors,

but the only flavor that is left to get is ‘void’.

Now wouldn’t that be neat.

There is supposed to be that subway station that no one ever recognizes,

and where no one call tell you what might happen if you get off.

Empty places and bare places,

smooth unused places,

and used places, in a state of those falling apart.

level 2, medium:

Have you ever looked up at

the roof of a shopping center?

Looking ahead you see a glaring bright place of labels and advertising but,

its really a wide cave-like hall that spends much of its budget on,

lighting and airflow.

Have you ever strolled around it, seen the gates for delivery trucks at the back?

Seen any of the places your attention’s lured away from.

The bits you’re not quite meant to see,

maintenance hatches and plumping,

pipes, tubes, electrical cables.

Things lackquered knowingly in Blending Blue and Go Away Green.

The little utility rooms and breaker boxes,

the air shafts and chimneys on the roofs along with the moss that covers them.

The courtyards and spiral-like backsides of housing,

seen from that north-facing window,

meshwire and trashcans and little tables for the employees.

Hidden-away wirings and

ducts clinging near the ceiling,

passing in corners.

Hidden shafts, or, access to repair the waterworks

hidden behind mirrors.

Air ducts up in the corner of the lecture halls.

Balconies or roof terraces around back alleys and little yards.

Near the station, the abandones cargo rails, the empty factory buildings

from back when everything worked by rail.

Or boat, maybe, if your town lies by a river.

level 3, advanced:

Have you ever seen one of those places

where the world just seems to stop?

You look up the bend of a mountain, and there’s just sky

beyond the bushes, or

there’s mist,

and everything fading into it.

Even the trees.

Looking far enough, there remains only

this indistinct, diffuse whiteness.

You know perfectly well that the world

continues right past the end of the light cone, but,

someonehow there is this sense of unease.

Of suddenly existing in a small and fragile bubble,

and wishing to hang onto anything, anyone, to feel solidity:

On the porch of a house, where its lamps don’t shine that far past its lawn.

A phone booth alone, as an enclave in a sea of black

Beyond the columns of a parking lot where the other wall lies in dark.

A train station at night that seems to continue into nowhere,

and you, waiting for your connection in

the yellow oval shining from a flickering lamp.

Most likely it’s just a diurnal animal’s healthy respect of the night,

even if it feels as if the world itself were whispering:

‘just as a warning, don’t forget that you don’t belong here’

level 4, wonky:

Have you ever experienced a place

that somehow seemed cut off from your overall map of the world?

You were wheeled here in a sickbed and woke

up without knowing how one walks here from the lobby, or

you were driven here, or you took the train at night.

Place one and place B have no common thread or connection

in your mind.

There is one map sprawling out from here and,

one map spawling our from there,

yet they don’t seem to be connected.

This is why it might feel a little weird,

to feel what you thought to be one discrete place

somehow blending into another,

after you came in from a different than expected direction.

After the long drive or walk.

Some places don’t even take a gap to feel like this.

Somewhere far high up with almost no entrance.

Curtains drawn aside to find your room suddenly snowed in.

Long months of mist and darkness near midwinter.

Reaching a room that ends blind with no further doors.

It’s like you’re almost surprised that the world is still there

once you emerge.

And when you go there,

by yourself, bringing no one,

there’s almost nothing from stopping the unprecedented from flitting

around the corners of your perception.

Nothing stopping a random object from

suddenly speaking you

demanding to know of you

what the heck is the point of all this.

No one and nothing to contradict

whatever it could possibly occur to you to believe.

Nothing keeping the land and the street

from just curving in on you into a fucking cylinder

swallowing you whole

when you’re there, perhaps your fear it

away from there, you may wish you could return

to be cut free then,

an immesurably long moment

where ideas of time lose meaning.

level 5, glitchy:

Have you ever been to a place that only

seemed to exist in your dreams?

While you dream, it seems quite naturally embedded in the fabric of your world,

slipping in without a difficulty as familiar and well-visited.

Perhaps it even featured in multiple dreams.

But as you come then near to waking,

it dissolves then like a dream, and figuring

that a place like that could never have existed

is how you know a dream took place.

How you knew it wasn’t real,

for such a place can’t be.

How could the lights be dazzling,

blinking from all cave-like sides,

when no-one else is here?

How would they allow this

(as if they hadn’t allowed countless things)

You do not know these rising waters,

or those strange, reflecting figures, lingering near the train station.

You could not casually walk in that room

to find it looking like perhaps an art installation.

Globes and palm trees and colorful objects.

Intricate many-portalled architecture

that betrays no discernible purpose

a place that wouldn’t dissapoint you by

turning out to be just another room

Windows that cannot be,

for there is no sky behind them

a mere sign warning you

not to expect a floor beyond here.

And if you fell, where would you get to?

What would you find?

Where would you find yourself?

Forgetting, perhaps

until you’ve been wandering in the nowhere for several eons

until you’ve experienced total separation from any other being

until you finally get some damn peace

and are finally allowed to rest.

level sqrt(-1), ???:

Have you ever wandered to a place

where you know you really shouldn’t be?

It doesn’t even matter what it looks like.

It’s the feeling that goes with it,

Like bright glittering confetti eyesore emergency warning

blaring imperiously into your ears

like bright big caps lock notifications taking up all your field of vision

of teetering across a threshold,

of striking out into the blue past those rails that might guide you

to any recognizeable destination

the fear not of what you don’t know,

but of what might turn out to be there, just as you expected.

And how that which you knew before this might not be the same

might even turn out to be disproven,

to have never existed at all.

Of looking out into the courtyard to find no sky.

Looking out of the window to find no sky.

The reduplicated rainbow frazzling of the last known components of an order

any hope of direction on this white sheet of naught.

This place is a place that is only in mind,

that is therefore taken with you, wherever you might go.

An omplicit place, a carved-into place,

a place you come to find and know again and again

before you know some semblance of recognition.

It was all for nothing again.

It meant absolutely nothing again.

Again I feel for it, again it hurt, again I gave up

but even that, I did half-heartedly

lingering near the theshold,

peering ever through,

in some direction where I once thought the world was,

but I no longer know.

How did I wander so far,

from everything with shapes and substance?

I could call out, but why bother?

There is no one there.

No one there who wants to hear,

who’ll suffer to listen,

which is the same as no one there.

Caring about things just seems to set you up for

these useless, painful fruststrations.

When everything disappoints, and nobody understands.

all their opinions and decisions becoming a consequence to you

when you wish just to exist

Everyone’s for freedom and autonomy until

It pertains to an actual example.

I cannot even put myself up

As any sort of example.

I don’t want that responsibility.

I don’t want anything of what comes with wanting something

But whatever it comes into my head to want,

I still am here. Here. Here!

I could try retracing my steps,

following what I think some scent might be,

but I it turns out that I don’t.

I can’t bring myself to.

Now I only crave isolation.

#feelings #baby tries to art #poetry #freeverse

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