A History of Sound from the Borderless World

After a city is laid to ruins, do you think it can ever regain its identity, what makes it whole, a sense of cohesion? Is that laid to ruins also? When I wander, I notice that the streets have no pattern, they spiral outward from wherever you choose to rest, some without names, the numbers on the buildings are out of order, passed a park where a stone statue of a war martyr poses enthroned, battered in bright red paint, abandoned courtyards, gutted cemeteries, a grass plot bordered on one side by a building with a billboard on it that faintly pulses under a frail fluorescent light. People come here to get lost & stay lost until they startle awake in the morning with no desire to stay any more & they leave in the same state as they arrived, restless & unamused, gulping whiskey, suitcase slung over the shoulder. Come here to abandon their ambition, stunned beyond the periphery of a world without an axis, to fall asleep in an afternoon dark as any night only to awake & feel as if you had just recovered from a long sickness, face draped in sweat, the curtains rustling together like dry skin. I was standing in a courtyard that I had somehow wandered into. Warm rain fell gently. Tapped off the bicycles gathered against the wall, off the waste bins & the cobbled floor. A melody appeared in my mind that I held onto as it repeated itself, gradually transforming into a soprano's voice, a sustained & shrill cry, unobstructed & piercing, then the melody continued repeating until the rain stopped & the voice ceased with no trace of an echo.