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The Grey Suit Category: Blogging
A part of the city between the financial zone and the
waterfront. Smell of the ocean behind tall glass buildings which give
way to brick built warehouses and weed grown
streets.
Once
this was a busy neighborhood. Now quiet and neglected after the demise
of the docks. Still a couple of grocery stores, a pawn shop, a shuttered
bar, a barber
shop.
You can
only find this place by drifting. It's impossible to walk directly here.
You must first surrender yourself to the tides of the city. Takes years
to do it. Slowly, the tides will take you
here.
One
day you'll find yourself looking into the window. packed with racks of
clothing. Overcoats, shirts, jackets, suits. Silvery grey dust on the
glass. The proprietor's spectacles reflecting dim yellow light as he
moves around behind the
counter.
You
go in, look down the racks of clothing, find a grey suit. It always
fits.
You take
the suit back to your apartment, put it on. Somehow, the light is behind
you in the mirror. You're only a silhouette. Feel a sensation of
stillness. Something has shifted. Sounds of the city humming outside,
traffic, voices,
faces.
You
don't realize that you are lost. A drift. Being like this for years
without
knowing.
Slowly
things moved away bit by bit. You
barely
noticed.
You go
out, tides moving you down the avenues. Sit in a cafe watching the
patterns in passing crowds. Waiter never comes for
payment.
After
a while, you seem to fade out. Sky reddens over the city. You don't
need to move
much.
Traffic
swirls stills. Intermittent cars passing. You move off the along the lit
avenues under broad summer trees disappearing in the
dusk.
Next day
you examine the material of the suit's sleeve in clear morning light. It
looks grey, but if you look very closely in good light, you can just
see that the threads are all made up of brightly colored fibers. Red,
green, violet, yellow, blue, orange, all in various combinations.
Millions of colors. Together, they all look grey from a normal viewing
distance.
When
you wear the suit you begin to
disappear. You can go anywhere and you
will barely be
noticed.
After
a slight initial interruption in everyone's field of awareness, you
fade out.
You
come to know that the fabric is a map of all movements in the city.
Everyone's crisscrossing journey all through the streets, corridors,
rooms, subways. Feel the effects as you move down the avenues. Endless
shifting and repeating patterns and rhythms. Tides moving through
you.
You
walk the streets woven into the fabric. You feel them somehow. The suit
shows you how to move. Translates, transmits. The tides move through
it. You go on in a voyage through the
streets.
It is
the lost suit. The great forgotten book of the city. It is woven all
through you, and you are incorporated into
it.
Misty
morning. Breakfast in a glass fronted coffee shop. Then you go down
fifth avenue through the atrium up to the rooftops and look out over the
great
city.
You
will get lost many times in your life and you will find this suit and
wear it until it fades. It will always fit. It will weave itself into
you and you will make its fabric more complete and more complex. The
more complex the weave, the more tiny colors in the grey, the more it
makes you
disappear.
Vast
illuminated city. Glowing streets from above moving over into
intersecting roadways. Glass fronted parades, figures walking, crossing
roadways, passing in and out of buildings. Long layers and sections of
structures looking into passing floors of buildings. Colors of carpets,
walls, flooring, clothing. Transparent, translucent structures dark and
lit internally. People streaming through the architecture floor to
floor. Escalators, elevators, some way through all these
cities.
Sometimes
you forget. You lose your
way.
He looked
down at his hands. The suit in a dim
shop.
You
will wear it and pass unnoticed through the
crowds. For many years you will like a
shadow. Then someone will see you. Will touch your hand and you will
begin to reappear. Become more distinct. Face less
blurred. Slowly, you begin to notice the change of seasons. The
weather. Become more
visible.
Years
later you will be living somewhere else in some suburb of another city.
The sun will be shining. You will have forgotten the suit. It will be
overlooked in the wardrobe somewhere. Thrown away. Given to
charity.
When
you tried it on once, you could barely remember. Marginal episodes
rapidly fading. The color was dull and it didn't fit very well. The
fabric looked worn. Time for a change
now.
The ghosts
go out and fade in the sunlight. The person who
wore the suit is now gone.
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