Black Seas Under American Highways

What is a progressive city that houses tens of thousands of houseless people dying of hunger and curable diseases? In a city like Austin, Texas – “the capital of weird” – the mentally ill hungrily roam the streets together with the beautiful criminals and the miserably dispossessed. In front of the world-renowned University lie a Scientology church, gringo mass chain taqueria, and a visible sea of houseless folks, manufactured beggars, thirsty alcoholics. It is important to remember the difference between the weird and the eerie and its implication to understand the phantasmagoria of contemporary American cities designed in the image of the ghosts of empire pasts. Our imaginaries areas colonized by the past as they are haunted by phantasms, ghosts, aliens. Recently, I have been attempting to construct a map of our world – the world of ghosts. A map that charts the city through its zones of decay, erosion, and reunification. We know that the city is but the enemies’ cities.

Sometime in the 1940s, amidst the death stench of world war 2, Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary: “I am tired of being a ghost. I am tired of being a mystery. I want to take form, to appear, and one only gains visibility by action.” Reading these lines gave me the confidence to rob a bank, an ambition I’d had for over a decade. Actually, that’s complete bullshit, but you probably knew that. Why would I ever read such a thing? The deeds of the footloose, solitary ghosts are what inspire such people to write, is it not? Their stories are not the product of their imaginations, they are but the narration of our exploits. Is it true that the homeless and criminals resemble ghosts? I heard that once in a Hollywood gangster film. If memory serves me right, it was said by a savage detective in a southern gothic noir when a janitor appeared to him and reminded him of a ghost, a pale, frail, angelic ghost.

He failed to recognize the cause of his unconscious impulse: janitors have also, along with the immigrants and the homeless and the criminals, learned the art of shadows, the science of ghosts. There is no other way to survive for us. You pass by our cities yet you fail to see us. Your apathy is what effectively converts us into ghosts, invisible, shadow, dangerous ghosts. We live under American highways, those roads you ride every day to and fro work, your daily tribute to the Gods – whose Gods? It took you excluding us from your world for us to see it for what it truly is and you for who you really are and we for who we now are. We built a continuum of ant colonies without Queens: we have also killed the Kings. There is no chaos or irrationality besides the one that organizes your society. We are not animals. We are fighting against animals, savages, barbarians. We are fighting against your world. We have many ways to fight against your world. We rob banks because the second we enter a palace of commodities we stop being ghosts and our fleshy messy reality is restored: we are seen! Cameras, yes, but also the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, we are seen confusedly, or rather disgustingly, and at that moment we again remember the reality of your world. We used to wait for the barbarians but they were us, they are you. Kill the one in your head. Destroy your job, your highways, your cities – there are beaches beneath the streets.