It was nice and empty out in Queens on the 4th of July. Quiet, inviting spots under shade trees (below left); limp, tattered real flags (below right) that remind us why zero-maintenance bumper sticker flags were invented; and the LIRR commuter train tracks stretching into the overheated distance (above), so still and empty I could hear a worn part tick every so often, like an insect in rising desert heat.
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Meanwhile, back in town, the Target Train (formerly the 6 Train, below) brought me back to reality and the real NYC -- once labeled Satan's Workshop, now become Santa's Toy Town -- where public space and infrastructure is sponsored by the highest bidder, those wonderful corporations that furnish what we share...
...with "street furniture" ad platforms that show us how to decorate our emptiness and keep ourselves occupied as the clock ticks down, as our supposedly sacred freedom seeps through our fingers because we can't decide how to spend it, because choosing one thing shuts out all the others.
We let con men sell us one self-serving Theme after another to fill the void, and it was only a matter of time before their sponsors became our sponsors.
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And here we are, living in their Theme Park surrounded by ads for things that feed our insatiability and rob us of contentment, that lure and agitate us with pointless noise and movement, until we really believe freedom is the ability to update Facebook while lounging at the park, surrounded by thousands of shiny plastic reflections of ourselves doing the same thing.
Wasting our freedom on baubles, signing our world over to the highest bidder, so sold-out that -- like a small dog whose owner dresses it in a tiny sailor suit -- we don't even notice we've turned into clowns, into Barbie & Ken dolls riding toy trains, the playthings of sponsors whose only interest is keeping us hypnotized and nursing at their machines until they've sucked us dry.
