a forgotten city
Friday, Dec. 10, 2004
@ 10:00 p.m.
to find a raison d'etre in hamilton, walk into the foyer of the sheraton. left, past the stairway, to the elevator. get in. push 18. leave the lift, turn right and right again. to door 1817, it's on the left. key in. over to the window. open the shades. take a good look at the bay, toward pier 4 and east farther than the industry. west, past the escarptment. at everything in the city limits, as far as possible. then close your eyes, and pretend the whole city has caught on fire and in an instant burned to dust.more than it could merit. finally, an end.in a city of leeches and bottom feeders, grasping for money, for time, for hope and othewise collecting an existence it could not earn; among the ashes in all that remains of a failed cause, in the wake of north-american steel crash; festering below the consciousness of an oblivious people; stemming from a thousand mildly terrifying causes, callousness and hopelessness and weariness rule the population. living here is less inspiring than living paycheque to paycheque. to live here is to live without meaning of any kind. with desolation. through method acting. sans saviour. hamilton is where the weary come to waste away, and where descendants of a fleeting industrial chance have stopped awaiting something better.overlooked by the university, carelessly named a tourist destination by the richest of the city's poor, shot with cameras blind to the filthy, rotton, decaying majority: a captivation and a cage, that is hamilton, ontario, canada.i'm through grasping and clawing and suffocating. with the final ounce of my withering spirit, i will push myself away from here. and into something vibrant. a choice that gives me hope against this corrosive backdrop, is escape. and while i know that leaving is the only way to save myself, i would not reccommend the same direction to another. in and because of the greed i've learned here, and by cause of the individual desperations i have witnessed, i know one simple truth to be evident in the highest and most definite way: these people cannot be helped.i must assure myself that leaving would not cure every soul as mine. and that those who remain, who argue that the image of their hometown has been misconstrued, and who will praise it in such a way as is laughable--to be spoken of a trash-heap--would be minds too exhausting to sway. i wanted to be able to help. i knew there was no such thing as a lost cause. but i will no longer sacrifice my well-being to be the one to play a heroine. i'm losing my mind. it has been stolen from me.by the forgotten city.and the sooner i forget this place and everything in it the better, i'm certain, everything will be.