CHRISTINE SCHULZ

John Armleder

Lost in the City

On board Spaceship Earth, all the Earthlings travel the
Universal Merry-go-round at cosmic speed without the
faintest idea of any sort of distination. Destination
Destiny might have started long ago. The good news is that
it's all been shot in cinemascope and has been colorised
at the very early stages of the Journey. The bad news is:
Where's the luggage, who packed it and with what?
Somebody else definitely attended the suitcases before
the check-in operations began at the gate on the way to
the take-off featuring the scheduled original Big Bang,
and here we are, flying now since ages without our bags.
So to say. Rats! But who really cares, when you don't
know when you arrive and not even where you are going?
Its just nerve-racking, because you sense that what you
need is in there somewhere, and some dumb officer is
obediently holding the unclaimed under his close scrutiny
in some other dimension, and therefore, far over in the
twilight zone, you might have your indispensable
cell-phone battery charger or your essential cuddly toy,
your skateboard or your ultimate shopping list from before
the Days captured in the frozen realm of Nevertime.
Well, meanwhile, in the cities, it's the same old
hullabaloo. Awareness is no programme down here.
It's just, well, let's call it eyes. Piled on top of
eachother. Piranese dungeons inhabited by Swiss yoddlers
and straycats, taxidrivers searching the avenues for
drunken ghosts roaming the vicinities, sherpas climbing
bamboo scaffoldings decking huge glass and steel towers
turned into polynesian artifacts and demon creatures
dancing along bridges and fancy room-service orders
zipping up in elevators. You might wan't to check the
lost-and-found department, but then again, the full city
is just that, and your might well be listed in the
inventory. Yes, meanwhile in the cities, it is quite a
hullabaloo.