Abandonware

I'm off my meds way too often. To be honest, there doesn't seem to be a definitive reason for it. It's not like I'm forgetting, and it's not like I'm trying to completely rid myself of them. Some part of me feels that it's the masochist in me that considers myself unworthy of good things. My cyan-tinted lens gives me the impression that the world outside is exactly how I feel about it. The subjective is objective, and definitely not in a healthy way. My eyes focus on the crumbling, decaying architecture. The abandoned structures. With so much time, effort, and money these places are now ignored. What was once something to look forward to is now something to be forgotten.

Overgrowth. Cracks. Plywood Boards. Graffiti. Homeless Squatters.

Perhaps this is what's always drawn me to become an Urban Explorer, as well as my affinity for post-apocalyptic media. The way I see things is a bit different. I live in a dystopian science fiction world. Love is forbidden. The privileged few are chosen, and the rest remain slaves. The news is all manipulation, run by the military industrial complex. We were all born with the desire for happiness and sold on the story about the American Dream. A happy, moral populace only exists in optimistic literature. The truth is film noir. So many of us live in constant denial about our environment. We continue because we're sold on 'hope' in one form or another. Stories reflect our desires for happy endings, that there will be a light at the end of this dark and scary tunnel.

I meditate an awful lot on this one place I live near. It's an abandoned stretch of highway that includes an overpass. When it was built it supported a good deal of Hartford County traffic. Then the DOT had better ideas and changed their mind. They made a different road, and closed off that one. Since then it's never been maintained. There are fences in place to prevent anyone from even going there. Every time I drive under it on I-84E, or above it on Rt 6, I can't help but to gaze at what remains.

What is for me there? Why do I secretly want to sneak in, against the will of authority, and just be one with the place? Does it sing a song that reverberates in my psyche?

What would I actually do if I were there aside from being motivated to take pictures and be perpetually anxious? If I knew with the upmost certainty that I wouldn't get in trouble, I'd probably just sit down on the crumbled pavement, Indian-style, close my eyes and just listen. I'd hear the constant droning of traffic above and below me. I'd hear the wildlife that now inhabit this forgotten world. I'd feel my body resting on the broken road and the weeds that grow between the cracks brushing gently against my skin with each blow of the wind. A soft rattle from a fence.

Then something else. I have no idea what it is, or how to conceive of it without actually being there. Perhaps I'd consider it an alignment of spirits, the harmony of the notes, a reawakened energy feeding off it's counterpart forces.