Looking for a City (Daily Planet email #1040)

Did you hear they built a city in Nebraska?

What they go and do a durn fool thing like that for?

Oh, the usual: concentrate the wealth, get some sweet skim off the steel contracts. Give the pigeons a place to live, explore new dimensions in poverty. Try to attract some artists.

…Make some new shapes.

New shapes, some antagonistic alignments. Attractive discrepancies. Something to fight against, you know — disturbance of the placid.

It ain’t gonna fly.

It’ll never fly.

Hardly seems worth it.

No, not without a prison or a major-league ball team.

You ever been there?

The city? No. I heard it’s a hell-hole.

An urban hell-hole. Why is that always the way?

Well, you get enough people together and you start concentrating the bad.

But it’s all kinds of people, the good and the bad. Isn’t there also some concentration of good?

Yeah, but the good is disorganized. It’s much easier to be bad, there aren’t so many different ways to go about it.

Like the art.

Just like the art. It’s unfocused and goes nowhere.

But the artless –

They’re prevalent and ubiquitous.

So disappointing. No tears, though.

Not worth the tears. Save your self.

The food’s good.

…What?

Food’s good. In a city.

Yeah, but is it worth it?

Sure feels like it at the time.

Hey, you got that right.

Is there a word for that, that feeling?

I dunno. Fleeting?

Ephemeral?

Transitory.

Faux filling?

Desire? I mean in general?

Maybe Nebraskans just wanted to eat better.

I wouldn’t rule it out.

Is it likely, though?

No. Well, I’m sure I couldn’t say.

So it’s the new shapes theory, then?

Nebraska is a decidedly flat property.

How about the money thing?

Usually.

Maybe not the art?

Almost never.

And the good?

We’ll just have to keep building and see.