by Craig Reynolds
from v2n2, Spring 2000)
The sense of failure and defeat that defines Buffalo's self-image evidences a newfound realization of American futility––not the belief that nothing is possible anymore but that nothing is possible HERE––which is an inversion of the principle American dictum that the individual is always ENOUGH.
But in Buffalo, the individual is all we have, and the empty streets merely mock our aloneness. Our civic independence, the burden of which continues to scare us toward cities where we can expect a better return on American progress, marks a challenge of blistering importance: we must forge a justification for our endeavors beyond financial reward, beyond mere comfortableness, beyond the media gaze that forever overlooks us. In Buffalo, you have no overarching reality––money, youth, beauty, success or any other blinding illusion––by which to orient yourself ... but you're blessed with a renewed experience of your self, which is the only god that won’t abandon you anyhow. Simply by existing, you transcend all that which defines the American good life today.
As such, what when compared to more bustling cities may seem like purposeless absurdity is actually extraordinary: existing without purpose is revolutionary in a country warped by its unyielding devotion to the democratic middle, and its willingness to treat human lives like industrial machinery and the disposeable products it yeilds. Abandoned and alone, we are heirs to a legacy inhabited by Nietzsche, Blake, Whitman, Jesus, Buddha, Joan of Arc, Saint Teresa ... but over and over again, our own impassioned efforts at diversion (football teams, shopping malls, etc.) distract us from the cataclysmic fire that started inside and now burns around us. The charred out warehouses, silent grain elevators, abandoned buildings and empty stretches of once bustling streets reveal a city re-opening itself to genius . . . by eliminating everything except for imagination, the engine by which existence continuously reinvents itself in the void.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Contemplating hours as blank as they are never-ending, never-beginning; overwhelmed by indifference, inconsequence, boredom, the dark humor of the void; given to nihilistic hopelessness . . . I find myself suddenly blessed with a terrifying awareness: all of this matters! Every insignificant crack in the sidewalk, every broken brick supporting fading homes, every stumbling drunk on the streets––despite what the newspapers decide to tell us is newsworthy; despite the narrow images our televisions frame for us; despite what has been legislated us as the only “real” way to live. All of this matters! Every detail contained in every single instant! Every world contained in every pregnant moment! All of this matters! The sidewalk buzzes with being alive! The streetlights hum with the essential freedom of total inconsequentiality! The empty streets are fuller now than overstuffed supermarkets, brimming with an infinitude of no-possibility.
I don't need a "real" city to make my life worthwhile, to lose myself in a crowd of millions to make my existence matter. I don't need the justification of economic, social and political momentum to make life "real." No matter what I do, no matter where I happen to be (to quote Blake): Christ is the only god––and so are you and so am I. Existence itself defies the herd mentality; the ecstatic buzz of street lamps and rotting wood defies the logical ordering of existence, the essential hierarchy of democratic darwinism. I love that I live nowhere. I love that my existence makes no sense; the fact that my life can't be denied despite its lack of social, economic or political utility makes all the difference. I flaunt my useless being with every step I take (anyway). I celebrate my insignificance with every useless breath. I live nowhere––yes, and I'm still here! What do you have to say now? The dollars I don't have failed to terminate me! The television news programs that forgot to cover me failed to erase me! The history book that refused to include me failed to discredit me! I'm a nobody in a no-where town––and I'm still alive! This fact alone practically guarantees my sainthood! My life is insignificant––yes, and I'm free!