babel builders

the metro is my silent partner in a game of modernist-chthonic chance, my co-protagonist in a drama of soiled slots in a buried casino, as if i’m that queen of irony – death – the train the king of consciousness, fucking like royal worms on a hot bed in the city’s basement, marrying like chess pieces in a virtual temple of pissed time.

i would have the names of metro stops in a middling city changed from geographical holders to textual ones. 4 lines and 42 stops (37 unique) in this proposed system; here are the line names, stop names in sequence; transfer points are bolded; termini underlined. figure out where the washrooms and elevators are. if you’re bored, draw it; if you’re playful, print it out all pretty and swap it for the metro maps in your city; if you have lots of money, build it; if you’re crazy, eat it.

gameline

endgame – the thief’s journal – the sexual life of catherine m. – à rebours – la philosophie dans le boudoir – blood and guts in high school – the fury of cocks – tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius – the golden ass – all’s well that ends well

bloodline

bloodchild – heart of darkness – the passion according to g.h. – dark spring – endgame – the sailor who fell from grace with the sea – hippolytus – 20 essential tips for a successful marriage – jude the obscure – ubu roi – the trial – simulacra and simulation – les chants de maldoror – wuthering heights – blood and guts in high school

happyline

the palm-wine drinkard – endgame – fragments – the book of disquiet – a room of one’s own – strange tales from a chinese studio – simulacra and simulation – the cat in the hat – ataraxia fallabalist – les fleurs du mal – the need for roots – all’s well that ends well – utopia (utopia station should be meters from the palm-wine drinkard station and happyline veer dangerously close to blood and guts in high school station, but there should be no transfer between them)

line?

endgame – simulacra and simulation – the book of disquiet – alice in wonderland

that i can now move in the city with music in my head – that is, music that came to be in another’s head, externalized, having migrated into my head, a circle of vision – that the city’s noise’s expurgated and instead this : all i’m become is music with feet (a podaudioid) : this is a new city, one reconfigured to raise higher exponentially its finite ceilings … and so ours, a city for a virtualizing species. i don’t walk through your city … i walk through the city of my glorified mind.

i can spend 10 of 48 hours on the metro – almost a quarter of its waking life. if it weren’t for my physiological needs i’d want the system to be cast through the undersoil of the world, transferring in the middle of the north pacific, manatees, whales, banshees waiting on the platform beside me. crossing from san francisco to tokyo might take six days, but what of it? – i’d fall into a transit trance, the wheels would have the leisure to become words. the world’s 213,941 lines would be difficult to colour-code, the map would be enormous, its 5,808,227 stops costly. but it’s now enormous, it’s now costly, we need more colours (e-crayola, get busy!). what need do i have of the world above? … it’s as useful as heaven. i’ve put in for citizenship in the system below.

the autoflush plumbing systems attached to the urinals at the grande bibliothèque are branded zurn. unica might have been pleased.