Mumblings

I sit in a dark cell, a prisoner in the world I came to. In the old lands they would just kill you for what I have done. But the blood of countless deaths would seep into the streets and unmask the gleaming façade for what it was; the ruthless state. I say I sit here, but this confounds the fact that while my mental capacities would show that I clearly am sitting on the cool floor of this dark cell, the mind of the state and the people would explain that it is not really me that is sitting here but rather a demon. I am at home right now, my small apartment in the center of the world; ever watchful of the demons that lurk the city, waiting to take away that apple pie that cools in the windowsill. This is not the story of my movement from one physical location to another, from my homeland to the apartment and finally to the cell I sit in today. This is the story of how the I that is speaking existed was reborn and killed all in the course of a few years.

It began over the ocean in the old world. The wall had fallen a few years back, but as in all of those walled off states, the news was slow moving and the reaction was even slower. Yet when radical change began to happen it was not from the oppressive “Red” dictatorships to crystal clear democracies as American TV trumpeted. To be short, a state of anarchy erupted. Crime rule was accepted and later empowered democratically. The revolution was not so much a shift in whom the power was vested as much as it was a shift in where the power was vested. It moved from the massive squares and looming government buildings to dingy warehouses and small alleyways. Blood still spilled over into the streets, the masking façade refinished.

I was born into the image of this state and grew up in face of the revolution. I was never free to walk the street at night or run for political office or start my own business. If the crime bosses didn’t approve I could safely say that I would end up in the obituaries within a few weeks. The liberation of France during WWII rode the shoulders of Omaha. My liberation came in on trucks of Coca-Cola. It came in on the factories that were set up in the cities that had long ceased to produce. Like fearless soldiers defying the barricades of the Nazis, the contractors defied the threat of crime bosses. Yet soldiers aren’t fearless, and contractors Achilles lies in the belly of the money monster. In an environment still riddled with danger and uncertainty all that came to liberate me were coca cola signs.

It was then that I realized that, in order to truly be free I must move to the free land. Immigrating over to the New World was not the daring journey of my ancestors. It was a twelve hour plane ride to La Guardia. The image of coca cola had captured me; I was its victim. Its trap: a job with the NYPD. A year of training then I would be a full fledged officer. I stepped onto American soil in the year of 1997.

I woke up today listening to some Limp Bizkuit on the radio. But I wasn’t thinking of it, it passed entirely through me like a deluge of redundant information. The alarm clock didn’t have a working snooze so it played on. I finally relented and slipped out of bed and walked across the clothes littered floor and into the bathroom. I turned on the shower water and rubbed my eyes while the water heated up. The radio played on. I stepped into the shower, the steam muffling the blare of guitar and drums. Floating on the edge of consciousness, I washed in order hair, face, arms, chest, back, left leg then right leg. My ritual never changed, any deviation left me feeling dirty for the remainder of the day.

Shutting off the shower, the stream of radio returned, the song concluded as the DJ broke in, “That was ‘Rollin'’ by Limp Bizkuit, who are coming again this October on their world tour. Get your tickets through Ticket Master™ today!” Looking into the mirror, I knew I had to get those tickets. But then I remembered that this month’s rent was due in and I couldn’t pay for both the tickets and the rent after I had just bought that new computer a week ago. Disappointed I continued my routine: dry off, shave, put on clothes, eat break fast and brush teeth. As I was brushing my teeth I realized that I could simply put the tickets on my credit card and pay for them later.

Thrilled, I looked up the Ticket Master™ and placed a purchase for two tickets to the concert. I didn’t have anyone to go with but I knew that I could find some nice chick to go with or at least I could scalp it a day before if it came down to it. Happy with myself, I put on my uniform and walked out to the station.


That was the day the towers fell. I never made it to work. My uniform precluded me from walking down rows of cubicles. The story that happened to me that day isn’t important to this story. Or rather, what’s important about it is the unintelligibility of that story in comparison to the story that everyone would believe to experience. The North Tower collapsed at 10:28am; yet on LIVE CNN© it collapsed over and over for hours and hours. My story on that day cannot compete with a story repeated thousands of times along a movie reel.

The following days I was assigned to protect a few key positions along Wall Street. It didn’t matter that the rescue efforts were continuing on a 24-hour basis, I was to protect Wall Street. I stood out in front of the NYSE and watched as frightened and suit clad traders hurried into the exchange and hurried out. They knew, they knew. Another attack could come at just any moment. Attacks were going on all over the globe on two towers every minute of every day. The attacks permeated the air in slight waves as satellites beamed them down all across the planet.

It was then that I realized it. The attack, the destruction. The tall towers that I saw on my arrival years ago, gone forever. The coca cola billboard, gone in a smoldering flame. And my Ticket Master™ call: to an office in the building adjacent to the Trade Center. Collapsed, all records obliterated. My tickets gone, my credit card order fallen in the American Express HQ in the towers. All of it, all of that constant stream had fallen in the dust and explosion. The roaring silence of the collapse echoed itself as the roaring silence in the airwaves and the stock market. The reality that America stood for, dust, silence. A sandy molten steel desert for the real. Chunks of the Tower façade stood out in massive chunks as the wreckage spread out wide and piled over one hundred feet high.

My thoughts must have shown through my countenance. Three weeks later, in the dead of night armed NYPD officers in allegiance with the FBI broke down my door and killed me. Ripping my shell off they mutated the soul, fitted a new shell over it and sent me off in the cover of darkness. The long ride carried me through the void from my old shell to the new one: orange jumpsuit and a concrete floor.

I was from a largely Muslim country and therefore was a threat to the security of US citizen. I secretly established connections with known terrorists and was on record for growing up in the same town as one of the men who hijacked the plane that hit the earth in Pennsylvania that morning. I was interested in leading an American revolution. My motive was clear: my country had been devastated by large American corporations establishing bases then pulling out when the standard began to improve, only to send it back down again so that they could return.

My plan: destroy American power by taking out the money monster itself. Like the booggy man, the money monster resided in images. His best place was the World Trade Center. They cannot kill me though. They will not kill me. I will choose to return to the light of freedom and justice. I will choose to turn CNN back on and buy another Carmel Macchiato©. That is the way to my salvation. It is the eightfold path I shall venture to enlightenment, sipping Tazo Tea along the way.

I sit on the cold floor reading the newspaper. It’s been four weeks since they took me into containment. They told me the information I gave them would reduce my sentence. I am on my way to becoming a good American again.

The paper talks of the plans for the reconstruction. After the WTC had been leveled, the desert had returned to the heart of New York. This reality must be covered with concrete and steel, reconstructed into the palatable and profitable empire that would permeate the world. The towers would be reconstructed under the guise of a memorial. The memorial, to the death of the money monster. The light towers, it’s rebirth.