I am looking down from 300 feet up at a bridge, at boats full of people no longer walking on side walks amid the constant throbbing of cars moving people too tired to walk on side walks.

It is 97 degrees of shopping on the Magnificent Mile today. Women carry little bags from Neiman Marcus on their wrists, bags too small to be needed, and their men, come in from out of town, try to seem at home as they show off the city they do not know in the pretense of leadership wearing green kakhi shorts, with leather belts and t-shirts in bright colors they feel uncomfortable with, all on top of white sneakers and the socks that only work under their long jeans.

They come here because it's nearest place to come to.

There is no more coming and going over the Plains anymore. Anyone who stops out there in the desolate former grasslands discovers that the corner they are standing on is the same corner that Cary Grant stood on, waiting for a diplomat who will never come. Run into the corn, but it's already been dusted.

I was paid to come here to answer a question. The company wanted to know who it was, forgetting that companies are never a who. They are emblems for us, totems when they are strongest, for quests that we take, before we are ready to take quests, because we are afraid that the quests will never come on their own.

You would think that all the pipes and wires here would form a safety net to catch me if I jumped, but they are unforgiving. They turn the once-dark river blue green. It's the same color as the thick liquid some people use to clean their toilet bowls. Yet, this distinctive hue is never mentioned by the guides on the tour boats that go up and down the river announcing to eager listeners in false straw hats that they are now going up and down the river, passing under the bridges I walked on to get here.

The village life is endangered, and nomads are extinct. The decision of each step is a choice of how to move amongst millions of others, and the quiet places are those rooms we pay for to be alone with the air conditioner, stacked up on top of each other, 25 high or more.

Our decisions here are about department stores, and the length of women's coats, all the same, over their clip clopping shoes when winter comes. But it is summer now, and the wind cools us as it slips, falling over sleek pavement in search of something overgrown. Can you hear it, the background noise?

I never make it outside when I come here, but I do leave with my money to go back to my barn at home, to stash it away in the rafters. Some day, brought by business, I will not find my way out.

Across the canyon, 175 feet away, I can see the offices of the company that leaves its lights on all night. It is a honeycomb of cubicles, and the people who worked there in the morning, to sell products they would never themselves see, have all gone. I was there just this afternoon to give them the answer they paid for.

It was for the guardians, who keep the flow, that makes this city work, from burning our hearts.

Seek through these irregular times
then
open your mouth down and open up some splintered speech

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