suburbia is special because you can link/give it a domain to literally any of the entities.
like think about it. of course there’s the obvious lonely unchanging and empty sprawl of houses, isolated and locked in their own little worlds until the quiet burrows into your ears and turns you into a shell of yourself.
but why stop there? what about the endless repeating expanse of sameness, vast stretches of flat concrete under a flat open sky, making you feel so small and insignificant standing upon it?
or, perhaps, the way someone always seems to have their eye on you? personal security cameras and neighborhood watch pages are all the rage these days…
now take that to its logical conclusion. think about why your life has been arranged in such a predictable and bland fashion, think about who benefits, what webs of systems are supported and strung together through white picket fences?
the streets do all look the same, and that just makes it even harder to remember where you were going. all those roads and cul-de-sacs spiraling across the neighborhoods. hard to tell whether that street was there yesterday. they all look so similar.
perhaps it’s the residents themselves. you have new neighbors. these strangers don’t seem quite right, uncanny somehow. but you get used to them, as always. until one day you have, again, new neighbors. what happened to the old ones? you don’t want to know.
when it gets dark, everything is drenched in shadow. it’s quiet hours out, and there’s no streetlamps to reflect the dying light. something could be lurking. anything could be lurking. no one can see you waving for help.
you could be trapped, as well. wanting desperately to leave but feeling as though that hope’s been buried by the fact that you’ve never known anything else. there must be a world outside, but strain as you might you cannot catch a glimpse of it, and it chokes you.
we all know landlords aren’t really all that regulated. corruption runs rampant in real estate. how many infestations are hiding in the walls of foreclosed houses? what’s eating away at the pipes and ceilings and floors, spreading, multiplying, unseen until the foundations finally collapse?
but maybe the houses themselves are alive, twisted mockeries of shelter, creaking and groaning in such a human way you could swear the walls were flesh and not plaster…
police keep the streets all nice and clean and picture-perfect. but is that really what’s going on? or are they bored and hunting for something to do, someone to follow and harass? is the mirage of stability worth thinning the herd for?
these places seem so peaceful, but sometimes if you do a little digging you’ll find blood money underneath. what does that factory on the outskirts do? what’s with the gates, the guards, the secrecy? surely they aren’t making anything designed for violence and slaughter. surely it isn’t their industry keeping the whole town afloat…
prefab houses may be easy to build, but they aren’t always the sturdiest. fires spread quickly, floods collect easily on the pavement, tornadoes fling debris through windows. one disaster, and suddenly the uniform buildings are left crumbled and desolate.
and how about the pollution? the stench of gasoline fumes and six-lane highway strips, the way nature is pushed out to make way for these places that aren’t much good for humans either. suburbs necessitate the near-extinction of anything natural. those dandelions in the cracks? unlicensed organic material. there’s no place for them. maybe someday there will be no place for you.
and in the end, of course, so many live by themselves. so many might miss phone calls, text messages, visitors. sometimes, when people die in the suburbs, nobody notices anything until the smell gets strong or the newspaper is uncollected…
ALT
