Monday, August 28, 2006

Visual Distortions in the Urban Modality

Recently I've noticed, or else my subjectivity has, the impairment of the empirical, the fickle false-firing of perception on the streets of NYC (or so I would like to think). Especially on the East Side, mostly walking north on 2nd or 3rd Avenues, persons coming towards this roving I/Eye transform, or rather, begin a process of accelerated aging, that is mystifying and disheartening. Two examples:

1)at 4:53pm on Tuesday, July 18, a woman in her mid to late twenties, nearly two blocks away, slowly advanced towards me. Slowly, as she got nearer, her lips pursed, brow furrowed, ridges on her upper lift appeared, her entire body sagged under gravity's cruel make-over.

2) at roughly 9pm on Thursday, August 10, a man in a suit, brandishing a suitcase
and smoking a cigarette, walking apace with a woman similar in age, furiously blossomed into a octogenarian, a burst-capillary nose and thinning hair no more salient than the lines that began to impress itself in various directions across his face.

These instances, these phenomena, could be evidence of the shortcomings of my perspective, perception, vision. But what if certain streets warrant the instantaneous senescence of its walkers? What if these streets offer a portal into the future of its patrons, illuminating the process of their disintegration? Dear Reader, have you experienced this? What are your thoughts? --Curley