theywalkamong.us

      The vicious click & tremble of clockwork big as worlds beneath the face of time. The morning sun etches the ink & parchment shadow, it is 5:57 AM † He is asleep & dreaming of her, then he is awake, standing. He is not a morning person but he will not let it get a jump on him † His room is run through with gears & shafts. He lives in the clocktower, in the attic of the city. Where it keeps its relics, useless & priceless † The clock & its winder live alone above the living maze. The busy complexity all simplified to lines & boxes. Here is the only place where it’s † quiet in between seconds. He had become aware of that quiet & valued it immensely when necessity brought him down into the loud world. † His tea whistled & his toast popped & he climbed a narrow ladder to a small opening where there was a kind of sling chair tied to the inside wall † Breakfast in hand he pushes off with his feet & he is suspended from a boom hundreds of feet above the city, having tea with the gaping void. †

He hooks his empty tea cup to the bar above him, leaves the crumbs to gravity and gets to work. He must clean the four huge faces of the clock † He is paid by the government & paid very well, in cash. They are buying not only his specialized service but also his silence. † The current government has attempted to remedy corruption by regulation. But corruption is viral & viruses adapt so those who remain in † government are no less corrupt but possess a great deal more cleverness than their obsolete ancestors. † The upshot of all this is that it’s much cheaper to pay him handsomely under the table than it is to insure him legally. And no one is the wiser †

The name that’s not in any files or on any checks is Miles Claymore & 3 times a week he hangs 472 feet above the city, moving like a † suicidal spider on a web of iron & glass. † An ancient record player acts as inspiration and timing device. A violin concerto plays through the small door as he swings over the face. † It is only on the most sluggish mornings that miles does not finish one clock face per record side. He usually tried to time it out exactly † so the music was continuous. He had a collection of double lp sets that worked perfectly as the soundtracks for his precarious ballet † This morning he finishes just in time to snatch the needle from the inner track of the last record side. He already knew the best part of his day † was over. His fridge was very empty and he had sworn an oath long ago that pidgeons were not for eating. And so he steeled himself to be among † the crowds far below. He quickly showered, dressed and put on his long and weather beaten coat. He descended five flights of stairs til he got to † the top level of the elevator. It hissed and whined and brought him to the first floor. He stared at the closeness of the city, † inner voice. The sea of people in the open air market felt far more fraught with danger than dangling high above the gaping void. † He had worked out a fairly complex route to the apothecary. He had, after all, been hanging above the city every day for ten years. † The virtue of his route was that he could duck from rooftop to alley to gutter without human interaction, he had planned it this way. †