Of a night in Powell Street

The piece titled “Of a night in Powell street” is an experimental piece which personifies Powell street in Downtown Vancouver, Canada as a stream of runaway thoughts, within a backdrop of rising automation. The content is intended to blur the line between the thinker and thought. In doing so, the writer highlights themes around collective consciousness where tangible locations and intangible emotions bleed into one another. You are invited to re-imagine the sentence fragments as a crawling, living texture of a night time Powell street, where the artist resides.

Of a night in powell street

Of 12am, 1am, 2am, 3am, in Powell street, of sour breath, of addicted, afflicted, arrested thoughts, from a life lived in prisons, that I choose, its my freedom, break them out, all my doubts, all the trouts, salmon streams, buried, flapping for daylight, of shattered prisms, of soggy confetti, at June's end, of mother's laughter, of dampened screams, of Gastown slaughters, of squealing babies, aging to a smoker’s cough, of sticky dope, of sellotape swaying in the wind, of missing posters, tagging walls, of graffiti dripping, painting over tags, of palimpsest hours, frozen, of pungent odours, yellowed, fetid, putrid, moist growth, hybrid stains, from a dying mold, of leaving my home, pillow soaked, nightmares of Hal 9000, a Homosexual Hal, confused, afraid "I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it." Of beeping deathbed machines, toddy brewing, of ruptured savings, of father’s father, who killed his dreams, of ancestors’ footprints, walking over each other, not allowing me to speak, of Powell street, monitored by unpaid cameras, of of rigid routines, of a missed bus to med school, of a melanin coerced into being brown for its own good, of rotting henna, men don't get henna, stop it, of exoskeletons, of seized antennas, radio stations, boomboxes, hallucinating echoes, of Pacific Railways, clanking shipping containers, corrugated iron from the East, the crimson engine hums, of oriental workers, buried, in between, of runaway teens, of starving rodents, of squakwing seagulls, of cackling coyotes, of shrieking women, of an ill-tempered Dave, saying hi to Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll left, cursing lullabies to Webb’s skies, of flirtatious hymns, of asking god, where She been, the devil sleeps, with me, in cardboard castles, counting android sheep, afraid of fentanyl, of needles "substantially increase risk for infectious disease", of needle fixations, of ritualistic drawings, of blowing me a kiss, through the cracks of the screen, of rice grains swirling in cloudy waters, of black beans eating sentient machines, of jelly operating systems, of storage space running low, some system functions may not work, of missed video calls from the third world, distorted meals, of saving me a deal, prime day, prime night, of con men, of electric pigs, lined up for explicit shows, looking for a steal, buyer beware!

Of mobility contracts, of QR codes, of false reports, of outsourced ghosts from Descartes’ cubicle, of surveillance states, of missing residential school bones, 216, then 751, 1000, 2000, 3000, 5000, 7000, 10000, model numbers increase, of witnessing iphones, of unpaid machines, of a night in Powell street, of a night in Powell street.