Undercurrents

They are veins and arteries of the city. Resources are taken in and flushed back out. Finding the way in is a dissection, an id card the scalpel, peeling back obstacles preventing entry.

The arteries breathe an angry life into the great creature. The burning gases and fluids flow towards the heart. Enter these halls where the temperature rises and sweat drips into your eyes.

The sting of salt and scalding metal, the clash of pipes and hiss of gas draws you further into the glow of harsh lamps. There is a strange power in the air, and the senses are overwhelmed.

But now think of the vein. Filled with exhausted resources and cast aside the thick waste waters move out and away. Also hidden from sight and mind their function is no less important. Left to putrify in our homes the city would grow infectious and rot from the inside.

Here nothing can be heard but the intermittent drips of water from far off. Strange creatures that live off our meager leftovers crawl and scuttle in the darkness. The darkness of the sewer is complete save for the strange forms cast by a manhole’s camera obscura. The passing figures seem to drift ghostlike over the more tangible river of sludge.

In the darkness it is so difficult to grasp how those above live, utterly unaware that beneath them life flows back and forth like the tides; A constant ebbing and waning of the invisible, vital forces that rule their lives.