1.
The town, the town.
2.
All around us it coils, away from us it spreads. It is the air which we breathe, the waters in which we swim.
3.
Unseen ever in its entirety, too immense for us to know completely.
4.
And yet we know it.
5.
Can never hope to leave it behind.
*****
6.
In pictures on the internet, when seen from above , the town looks lifeless, silent, alone, reduced by distance and perspective to little more than an outline on a page.
7.
A tracing of a gravestone.
8.
A ghost
of a memory.
9.
But the town is not a ghost.
10.
It lives.
It breathes.
It sleeps.
It dreams.
*****
11.
And it’s important to remember that the town, that any town, isn’t a town at all.
12.
It is hundreds of towns, thousands of towns, millions of them, all at once.
13.
One for each of us alone.
14.
All of them overlapping with the others, boundaries almost identical, but never quite the same, never fully collapsing into one shared world.
15.
Even the closest people have their secrets from each other, whether they mean to or not, whether they know it, or don’t.
*****
16.
Does the town remember
or does it forget?
17.
Flowers still tied to the railings at the scene of a crash
the names on the memorial cards
faded down to nothing.
18.
Even the names we carve in stone are worn away in time.
19.
And on the memorial benches in the park those of us who aren’t allowed to die
sit down here and lose our minds as the days continue to pass us by.
*****
20.
The town is the river, the sea, the lakes and canals.
21.
Natural or artificial, it makes no difference now. Field, forest, garden, park. It’s all the same.
22.
Once the town has claimed you there is no escape. No return to what you were before.
23.
Even that which isn’t transfigured
Is subsumed.
*****
24.
The town is the paths we walk.
25.
The routes we choose through unchanging streets.
26.
The quickest, the safest. the scenic, the circuitous.
27.
The possible configurations we can choose from as numerous as the reasons we choose them.
*****
28.
But equally the town is the paths we forgot.
29.
Alleys between houses, behind gardens.
30.
Cycle routes through abandoned industrial estates. Footpaths across dead farms.
31.
The town is the empty car parks behind rotting pubs. The town is the empty squares of unused garages on the edges of housing estates.
32.
Relics of the times when cars were kept indoors at night to keep them safe from the rain. Cars don’t rust anymore, but the garage doors still do, victims of gentle neglect, decades now of decay. Obscure artworks occupying forgotten galleries.
*****
33.
The town resists change.
34.
Yet the town is change.
35.
It doesn’t care for the futures we dream, just rolls inexorably on into the futures we make.
36.
Or the futures circumstances make for us.
37.
The town following paths of growth and decline unpredictable in nature.
38.
Inevitable in hindsight.
39.
History as fate.
*****
40.
Who lives in the town?
41.
Casts of characters too big for us to ever get to truly know.
42.
And who is it for?
43.
You don’t have to live here for the town to count you among its denizens.
44.
To take you to its heart and claim you as its own.
45.
Travellers and tourists. Shoppers and sailors. The workers and the weekenders.
The drunk, the disorderly.
46.
The lost.
47.
The lonely.
*****
48.
Even then, we think of it as ours. Built for us, bought by us, in and out of the town we move. Replaceable parts within semi permanent structures.
49.
But the town doesn’t discriminate or differentiate. It welcomes the domesticated and domiciled, the transient, the lost, the wild.
50.
Human life no more important to its sense of self than any other.
51.
Cats, dogs,
birds, beetles
ants in their billions
microbes in their uncountable trillions.
52.
Hedgehogs hibernating through the winter. Cicadas sleeping in holes for seventeen years. Leviathans lurking in the lakes for so long they’ve been forgotten by science, become myths even to themselves.
53.
All of these the town calls its own.
*****
54.
The town is fractal in other scales too. Like life, it exists in all dimensions, occupies all available niches at every end of every scale.
55.
And thus, the town is unmappable.
56.
And yet endless mapped.
57.
The town has existed for:
ten thousand years (unofficially)
two thousand years (officially)
58.
And in that time, the town has moved, merged, shrunk, split, grown, remerged, stretched, sprawled.
59.
Like patches of mold on bathroom tiles.
60.
Like oil spilt on a pristine sea.
61.
Like blood seeping out of an untreated wound.
62.
And we try to pin it down in so many ways, reduce the town down so it’s small enough to fit in our heads, in our hands.
63.
But still big enough to seed our dreams.
64.
We name the streets, number the houses, register the cars.
65.
Road maps, bus routes, railway timetables. Cable networks, drainage schematics.
66.
A million overlapping circulatory systems sketched out and recorded, each one distinct, discrete, and incomplete.
67.
Even at the edges there is no certainty as to the town’s extent. Boundaries differ depending on who you ask. Borough councils, county councils, constituency spread.
68.
Borders differing along lines historic or bureaucratic.
69.
Personal, nostalgic.
70.
Real. Imagined.
*****
71.
And the town extends not just outwards but upwards.
72.
Not quite infinitely, but further than you’d think.
73.
The paths of birds and butterflies. The formation points of clouds, rain, snow.
74.
Dust and dirt and fumes and smoke
75.
Endless waves of heat radiating out of our homes, out of tarmac, out of stone laid down over what once was garden or grass verge or uncut patches of unclaimed borders.
*****
76.
The town is a history of horror
77.
Death and disease
violence, rape, murder.
78.
And worse.
79.
War
genocide
slavery
80.
Mobs and gangs in their anger and their glee
tearing apart their kith and kin.
81.
The town a necropolis built on the bones and ash of the uncounted and uncared for.
82.
Buried in the dirt of history.
*****
83.
And the town is another necropolis.
84.
This one built in memory of the bones that we count, and care for and celebrate.
85.
In cemetery stones
and statues.
86.
In street names
song titles.
87.
To honour a past we venerate.
88.
And create.
89.
And remake.
90.
Endlessly.
91.
To assuage our guilt.
92.
To bolster our sense of self.
93.
To unify the ununifiable.
*****
94.
The town is love
and memories of love.
95.
The hope of love.
96.
Love yearned for.
97.
And even love earned.
98.
Eventually.
99.
At times.
*****
100.
The town is every aspect of every one of us that has lived or worked or walked within its walls.
101.
The town is nothing
and no one.
102.
The town is the silence of the night.
103.
And the silence of the morning.
104.
And the silence of grief.
*****
105.
The town is a faded sign
that welcomes you in.
106.
As long as you’re driving carefully.
107.
And yet the town doesn’t ever say goodbye.
108.
Doesn’t care who lives or leaves.
109.
Who stays.
110.
Who dies.
*****
111.
The town extends below the town we know.
112.
Past the deepest tunnel.
113.
Further than the oldest stone
from the oldest hearth.
114.
As far as the most persistent seepage
of oil, chemicals
waste.
115.
Staining the soil almost as black and as dead as the coal beneath even that.
116.
Coal so deep we haven’t even had time yet to find it.
117.
To dig it up.
118.
And burn it.
*****
119.
The town is the town only seen in dreams.
120.
Extended.
121.
Or condensed.
122.
Into whatever purified, rarified, anxiety induced nightmares
we let plague our nights.
*****
123.
The town is the town as featured in films and tv.
124.
Location shots that separate the actual
from the fact
125.
The town transposed to different places
different times.
126.
Rearranged into configurations it never once was
127.
Nor will ever be.
128.
Permanent records of its history.
129.
As unreliable and persistent
as memory.
*****
130.
The town is a prison to be escaped.
131.
And ignored.
132.
Forgotten as best we can.
*****
133.
The town is a utopia to be retired to.
134.
And embraced.
135.
A weekend away.
136.
To revitalise our soul.
*****
137.
The town is sick.
138.
Yet never dies.
139.
No matter how rundown the streets.
140.
No matter how derelict the houses.
141.
No matter the how boarded up the storefronts, how long abandoned the factories.
*****
142.
And even dead towns still live.
143.
As monuments.
144.
As memories.
145.
Revealed in the contours of newly ploughed fields.
146.
Or left lurking beneath the waters of a flooded lake.
147.
As hollowed out ghosts by the sides of the road.
148.
Haunted corridors through which we can not only drive but see some faded old glamour as we pass.
149.
Like a heat mirage we can almost touch.
150.
But never hold.
*****
151.
There are places in this town where you could just sit down and stop.
152.
Places no one would ever find you.
153.
Routes so unused they’re essentially your own personal paths.
154.
And there are places in this town where you can’t even pause.
155.
Not for a second.
156.
Not to get your bearings.
Not to check your phone.
Not to tie your shoelaces.
157.
Not simply even to look at something.
158.
At anything.
159.
That might have fleetingly interested you,
caught your eye.
160.
Paths of constant motion, rivers of people.
161.
Everyone demanding you move forward at their pace.
162.
Without impediment.
163.
To the necessities of their progress.
*****
164.
There are places in this town bathed in constant light.
165.
There are places in this town that haven’t seen the sun in years.
166.
If ever.
167.
There are places in this town so quiet all you can hear is yourself.
168.
The workings of our body.
169.
The whispering of your own mind.
*****
170.
And there are places in this town so loud not even screams carry far.
171.
Exuberant or exultant
Furious
Fearful
172.
All of it lost in the noise.
173.
Of existence.
*****
174.
There is graffiti in this town so old it predates the language we speak.
175.
Maybe, in places, even predates written language itself.
176.
And there’s graffiti in this town so new the paint has yet to dry, the words still wet on the walls.
177.
Unseen by any eyes except those that wrote them.
178.
That are writing them still.
179.
Will always be writing them.
180.
Somewhere, somewhen.
*****
181.
The town is an edifice, a castle built of concrete.
182.
Of stone.
183.
Of metal and of glass.
184.
Illusions of permanence.
185.
To quell our fear of transience.
186.
Yet the town is never even given enough time to rust and decay.
187.
The whole facade torn down and replaced as fast as we can.
188.
On the whims and desires of those who think of nothing
beyond their own reward.
*****
189.
And the town is an edifice, a castle built on sand.
190.
Sheds and caravans.
191.
Greenhouses,
old ponds.
192.
Fences, gate posts, stiles
Washing lines
fairy lights.
193.
Plastic chairs
on cracked patios.
194.
Sitting there forgotten in plain view.
195.
Outliving their own use
and our entire lives.
196.
You’ll miss them when they’re gone
197.
Without ever
knowing
that
you
do
198.
Like inkstains on old desks.
199.
Like footsteps in snow.
*****
200.
The town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is the town is
___________
Notes:
1. Written between November 2024 and January 2025
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