Gothamesque Without a Batman to Come to Ones Rescue

Today while commuting to work I looked out and what I saw was a bleak landscape that resembled Gotham City – the crime ridden city of Batman comics. There were these huge under-construction buildings standing tall and grey and on it a grey rain was falling from a grey sky. The metal, the tower cranes, the scaffolding gave an eerie feeling of disconnection, of a future gone wrong somewhere.  There’s a depressing kind of grey everywhere, even the trees appear grey in the dull grey of the light. Thoughts reflect this as I wind through a long glacial queue of people moving slowly towards the exit at V.T. station. V.T. had recently undergone a massive face lift consisting of various badly needed repairs. I don’t know what they repaired because, as I walked, the water dripped on me from everywhere, there was a drain pipe disgorging a heavy torrent from the ceiling somewhere, there was water on the platform, trodden by feet, muddy and slushy.

God help us, I said under my breath. Why is no one complaining? Are they depressed? They move in this slow glacial queue without raising their voice, obedient of their superiors, not daring to say anything for fear of being made the victim of a backlash. Fools! They have realized it is better to lower their heads in these gloomy-gotham-esque times when everything around one seems like a crime, and everywhere you probe you see the deep tentacles of immoral minds. Ones mind is muddled in turmoil in the bleak, greyish surroundings.

Then I come out and stand in the pelting rain, getting all wet and disconcerted with a bunch of people all hailing taxis which do not stop. They pass us joyously on their great missions of saving the world from falling off the edge, we the mere mortals of no consequence. We the independent people of a free country.

(Again, can you notice the style of the author I am reading? Henry Miller in this instance. I call it subconscious literary aping. We writers copy each other’s styles unconsciously. That’s why I left some online forums because the bad writing was spoiling my language further instead of improving it.)