On a New York subway car, the new trains spark the thought of why are there new trains? Why are the old trains not used again and again? And I realize that somewhere out there is a corporation, started by a man or men, operated by hundreds of people, with a human resources department and constipated-nerd-computer-techs and illiterate-mailroom-slaves and bloated executives and attractive assistants and maintenance people who change the light bulbs and refill the water coolers and stock the printer supplies and cafeteria employees who arrive early to stock the stale sandwich machines and access passes for the employees to enter and move about the building into sterile conference rooms with wall-mounted projectors and laser pointers and sleek meeting tables, employees who populate the circuit-like town around it, driving to and from work in their leased automobiles with the highest safety ratings to their cookie-cutter townhouses and condos where they keep the objects they purchase at the local strip-malls and department stores, and where their fat little children sleep safely at night with their favorite toy designed by some licensing company in New York, but sewn by another child in a third world country so these children-of-the-corporation can remain within the palace walls and never seek enlightenment, and the car seats which have safety straps so these mini-slaves can stuff their faces with Happy Meals and Lunchables and grow big and strong on the milky tit of suburbia and replace their parental drones at the same desks and cubicles of the corporation, emptying the water coolers and sandwich machines so that other token paychecks can be distributed and more living dead can populate the malls and fast-food drive-thru lanes that feed the fat mouths of white people living in sunny towns with Wall-Street Journals on their sundecks who collect the rent on this ghost world.
This corporation lobbies local governments for transportation contracts, and makes the correct pay-offs and “contributions” which land it the most lucrative deals, such as the New York Subway system, or the airport monorail in Denver, or the buses in Pittsburgh, each contract worth millions upon millions of dollars which after payment to the architectural firm that supplied the plans and the engineers who designed the system and metal suppliers whose salesmen showed samples of the latest materials and designers who determined the sterile esthetic which would make the most sense in the psychological-commute-control-pattern and the foremen who read the blueprints to the muscle force that actually moves the materials and aligns the machines that construct the train cars, bolting the seats into place, fitting the motors that operate the automatic doors, the same men who are in the doctors offices and school plays and marriage counselors and drunk tanks and courtrooms that keep the system feeding off itself like ocean-wave-stomach-acids, fattening and dying on the poison-foods and happy-pills that kill and keep them alive at the same time, long enough to work away a lifetime in exchange for a rocking chair and a tired death, a death that is merely a shadow or ghost of another death that happened many years before, a slow sad death of death.
The Governor announces that $1 billion will be used to fix the New York City Subway system, which will of course result in a fair increase, as consultation fees are created every step along the way and prices are gouged for those in the loop, sucking dry the busboys and cleaning people who travel from Queens into Manhattan to wash the dishes and scrub the toilets of the workers in the big towers, who wear suits and ties and carve up the world into contracts and revenues and shares and profits and steal the souls of those who serve them feeling entitled to their spoils because they sat in University classrooms listening to those who decide what is worth knowing, and followed the rules well enough to receive a piece of paper, and now pay their bills on time and eat organic foods and sweat through their tired workouts with diligence despite their preference for junk food and TV programming and masturbation which they do anyway but manage to hide from the world and play grown-up pretend and resist the urge to curl up and cry in the shower every morning and mourn their own death, and just quietly and obediently wake up and swallow designer coffee in the funeral-march to the office so they can secure subway contracts.