amsterdam houston
it's hard for me to remember now how exactly it happened, why we started, and why we thought it would make any sense as a record. we knew each other in passing from our school days. i knew that he was living in harlem. i am not sure of the year in which he took up residence there. i have been in atlanta for as long as i can remember. at the time, i was with the paper. an establishment paper. i followed the events as best i could through the wires and transcripts. i think the island had been sealed for quite some time. all the cities were under martial law for fear of copycat uprisings. communications between urban centres were limited. i don't remember if our PDA devices could transmit the images at that time. they must have been able. i never heard his voice. that much is certain. i think. it was always text. and images. he was not one of the insurgents. at least, he would not admit as much. in manhattanville, you were either an inhab or an estab. the insurgents were almost neither, but closer to the inhabs. he loved there. he tried to at least. i can't remember his racket. he became caught up in the city's devolution. he was fascinated with the ways the three groups in the city affected one another in second hand ways. physical ways. as each group had separate goals, their manipulations of the city fabric were distinct. always the inhabitants struggled to merely make their surroundings livable. farms flourished in the streets. they retook fragments of the city for their own. they were insurgents in their own right, but their goal was modest. survival. our communications started innocently. mere curiosity drove me.
