A Disquisition on Decay
By James Owens
The inhabitants of the waste quarter, if anyone actually lives there, always smell of the fine gray dust that works its way into every crevice and crease, whether in a living surface or inanimate. Sometimes I find one of them standing beside me on a city bus or lurking in the doorway of an unopened shop, always eyes lowered, male or female or indeterminate, slouching into the soft, torn shelter of a worn overcoat, or nervously tugging raveled sleeves over their raw-looking, knobby wrists. They never return your gaze, and if by chance you happen to challenge one of them face to face, stooping a little to peer straight into their lowered eyes, where they have the perpetually weary, pouched look of the inveterate, night-wandering insomniac, they look away quickly, lips moving, as if macerating words that they will swallow rather than speak. And always their presence is announced by the dust, a piercing, acrid odor that surrounds each of them like an aura. If you happen to brush against one of them on the street, by chance or experiment, the dust leaves gray smudges on your shirt that are strangely difficult to wash away, When one of them rises from a park bench, where he or she has settled for an hour, oblivious to all around, as if exhausted by long trudging in order to arrive here from the heart of the waste quarter, the outlines of thighs remain sketched in dust, which any mother will suspiciously brush away before allowing her child to rest there.
No one knows why the denizens of the waste quarter venture out, since they clearly wish to avoid interaction with our citizens, and they are never seen purchasing anything -- groceries, for example -- to carry back with them into the dim maze of streets and weed- and debris-chocked lots that may, or may not, once have been the most thriving regions of the city. In fact, I have never seen one of them return to the waste quarter, at all. They seem always to be moving out, away, as if some centrifugal force directs their shambling walk toward the modern, efficient edge of the metropolis, where they can only appear out of place and forlorn, sometimes thrusting a trembling palm out to passersby, like a beggar, though they apparently are not interested in money and will only stare, perplexed, at a coin laid in their hands. I do not know what they want or where they go --- perhaps they wander beyond the very bounds of our city and into the farmlands and hills of the environing territory, but I would know nothing of that.
It is, obviously, a misnomer to speak of the derelict precincts as a “quarter,” though this is the common parlance of the city’s residents. The waste quarter is vaster by far than the clean, modern city that has grown up in a thin ring around it, like a halo. In fact, I have come to suspect that the waste quarter is larger than the entire city that it is a part of, though I concede that the logic of such a puzzling claim is difficult and tenuous. Anyone who spends enough time wandering the miles and miles of those somber, deformed alleyways or picking a hazardous way along the buckled, overgrown sidewalks, past the boarded-up windows of those crumbling factories will, I know, come to agree with me, setting aside the conundrum of relative proportions in favor of the absolute, intuitive certainty that the waste quarter is of an unfathomable size, almost endless. But why hedge, why say “almost”? Have I not, in my latest wanderings, found myself indulging in reveries of infinity, speculating, in a dazed state, that any journey to the rotted heart would involve some paradox of infinite delay and deferral, ever closer, but never an arrival?
And the waste quarter is growing. Fresh new buildings, vibrant with the energy of those who live and work there, dull to gray and start to rain debris after only a few short years, as they lose hope and are absorbed. The people of our city are constantly building at the bright edges of our borders, just to keep pace with the degradation pushing out from the center. But I have lost interest in these lively arrondissements, where encounters in the street seem tainted by the thumping of blood in the veins of passers-by, an irritant like the odor that wafts out from a butcher’s open door on a summer afternoon, and the speech of respondents is undergirded with a curious, pervasive grating note from deep in their throats, like bricks dragged across a basement floor. Purity is rare.
- - -
James Owens's stories have appeared in The Harrow, Nossa Morte, and Farrago's Wainscot, among others. He lives in New Carlisle, Ind., He writes a lot. Sometimes he does other things.
By James Owens
The inhabitants of the waste quarter, if anyone actually lives there, always smell of the fine gray dust that works its way into every crevice and crease, whether in a living surface or inanimate. Sometimes I find one of them standing beside me on a city bus or lurking in the doorway of an unopened shop, always eyes lowered, male or female or indeterminate, slouching into the soft, torn shelter of a worn overcoat, or nervously tugging raveled sleeves over their raw-looking, knobby wrists. They never return your gaze, and if by chance you happen to challenge one of them face to face, stooping a little to peer straight into their lowered eyes, where they have the perpetually weary, pouched look of the inveterate, night-wandering insomniac, they look away quickly, lips moving, as if macerating words that they will swallow rather than speak. And always their presence is announced by the dust, a piercing, acrid odor that surrounds each of them like an aura. If you happen to brush against one of them on the street, by chance or experiment, the dust leaves gray smudges on your shirt that are strangely difficult to wash away, When one of them rises from a park bench, where he or she has settled for an hour, oblivious to all around, as if exhausted by long trudging in order to arrive here from the heart of the waste quarter, the outlines of thighs remain sketched in dust, which any mother will suspiciously brush away before allowing her child to rest there.
No one knows why the denizens of the waste quarter venture out, since they clearly wish to avoid interaction with our citizens, and they are never seen purchasing anything -- groceries, for example -- to carry back with them into the dim maze of streets and weed- and debris-chocked lots that may, or may not, once have been the most thriving regions of the city. In fact, I have never seen one of them return to the waste quarter, at all. They seem always to be moving out, away, as if some centrifugal force directs their shambling walk toward the modern, efficient edge of the metropolis, where they can only appear out of place and forlorn, sometimes thrusting a trembling palm out to passersby, like a beggar, though they apparently are not interested in money and will only stare, perplexed, at a coin laid in their hands. I do not know what they want or where they go --- perhaps they wander beyond the very bounds of our city and into the farmlands and hills of the environing territory, but I would know nothing of that.
It is, obviously, a misnomer to speak of the derelict precincts as a “quarter,” though this is the common parlance of the city’s residents. The waste quarter is vaster by far than the clean, modern city that has grown up in a thin ring around it, like a halo. In fact, I have come to suspect that the waste quarter is larger than the entire city that it is a part of, though I concede that the logic of such a puzzling claim is difficult and tenuous. Anyone who spends enough time wandering the miles and miles of those somber, deformed alleyways or picking a hazardous way along the buckled, overgrown sidewalks, past the boarded-up windows of those crumbling factories will, I know, come to agree with me, setting aside the conundrum of relative proportions in favor of the absolute, intuitive certainty that the waste quarter is of an unfathomable size, almost endless. But why hedge, why say “almost”? Have I not, in my latest wanderings, found myself indulging in reveries of infinity, speculating, in a dazed state, that any journey to the rotted heart would involve some paradox of infinite delay and deferral, ever closer, but never an arrival?
And the waste quarter is growing. Fresh new buildings, vibrant with the energy of those who live and work there, dull to gray and start to rain debris after only a few short years, as they lose hope and are absorbed. The people of our city are constantly building at the bright edges of our borders, just to keep pace with the degradation pushing out from the center. But I have lost interest in these lively arrondissements, where encounters in the street seem tainted by the thumping of blood in the veins of passers-by, an irritant like the odor that wafts out from a butcher’s open door on a summer afternoon, and the speech of respondents is undergirded with a curious, pervasive grating note from deep in their throats, like bricks dragged across a basement floor. Purity is rare.
- - -
James Owens's stories have appeared in The Harrow, Nossa Morte, and Farrago's Wainscot, among others. He lives in New Carlisle, Ind., He writes a lot. Sometimes he does other things.
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