TWELVE: THE INDUSTRIAL CORRIDOR AND THE GHOST WE CALL MEMORY

The industrial corridors. Actually the buildings are not tall. Mostly one story. Small sets of offices in front. In the old days means dogs were kept around, - and the requisite barbed wire. Some of those things remain. But it’s changed, - and there are cameras instead, and more polite signs with simple designations such as No Trespassing. Barrels stay there around the sides of some buildings, - oil, canvases, feral things verdant growing through cracks in the cement. I used to imagine that a witch came to the chemical ravine and did dances and cast spells, laughing as she would. But, there are mostly just rocks and gravel, - someone’s discarded chair, and a few old-timers still eat their lunch out there in the sun. They roll the shipping bay door up first and survey the scene. A city bird, a seagull. They are city birds also I suppose. Flying slowly and more jumping from little place to place. I mean, where is there really to go in the industrial corridors? Fences, pallets, old steel hubs. Power washers and a thousand old cars. Maybe there are ghosts there and maybe there are not. If not, it is certain that there is the ghost we call memory.