This is for anyone who has ever lived in a large metropolis and has had to deal with such words as 'gentrification', 'urbanization', 'graphitti', 'rent-control', 'homelessness' and 'privatization'. This is for me. This is my city. This is where I go when I want to excape all the people that parade through my life and through my streets and try to tell me what I should be doing to change this place. This is where I go when they are all asleep in their comfy rent-controled luxory living apartments provided by small venture capitalist start-ups. I wander and I see the things that they have built. I see their touch. I see how they scream out to be touched. I see the hypocrosy of everyone. Do as I say not as I do. I see a balding white man putting up a sign telling everyone to buy whatever uneccesary product the world has chosen to convince itself that it needs. I see kids rejecting these signs and putting up their own signs in it's place which say nothing other than 'I was here. And now millions of people will see that I was here. And I am more worthwhile than another useless product.'

I wander my streets with my thoughts. I see concrete and paint and glass and metal. I see traces of green striving to grow up through the cracks and eroding this society we have built even as it grows. Nothing is forever. Everything is tangible. Nothing as it seems. Everything is as it appears to be. Nothing is more worthwhile. Everything is fragmented. Nothing is forever.

I meander past people's homes, past their works, past the places where they store the things that they make at their works, past the places where they transport these goods, and into the places that are beyond. All is quite here. Few people chose to live here. They are the forgotten. Living in homes made of tents, and tarps, and palletes, and carts. Living in the shadows of the rest of society. www.shoppingcarthome.com www.neverusedacomputer.com www.societydoesntgiveafuckaboutme.com www.defenestration.org Why are these places we have built. Why do they need to be. What have I done to create this? What have I done to destroy this? What can I do to change all this? How can I make sense of these things I once thought as I now sit in a comfortable seat in front of the latest technology called a computer supposedly doing a job trying to give a face to a faceless corporation so they can make even more money and scury away faster to their skyscraper office buildings past legless people dripping snot and pressing a street sheet and a paper cup in thier face asking for just a taste of the pie? Do I give or do I take? Do I care? Am I indifferent and jaded and impartial? Do I have an edge? How can I make this hole in my face that I made to give myself an edge stop hurting?

I cross canals that reek of sewage and unknown biomedical waste and signs that warn fishermen not to fish and those that ignore these signs and fish and cook those fish over fires built in barrels next to concrete supports that hold up roads that carry thousands of people to unknown places promising them wealth and a promise of no more fish. I am done here. I see lights extruding from places that should be dark. I hear sounds that go thumpa-thumpa-thumpa in the night. Rhythms. Lights. Culture. People next door quieting the noise with a promise of a cultureless assimilation. I will not be assimilated. I will make this place my own. This is my home.