The empire. It rules with a hard fist. It dominates and conquers. It grows and produces; it lives and lives on.
Every year there's a new harvest, but the worst storms never bring famine. Hunger maybe, but only for a time. Resilience is a powerful soil.
The harvests began years ago, when the past was the present, old things were new, and dreams weren't mist. A city was laid. A city built by the hands of dreamers.
Bleeding hands and sweating brows of the determined formed the infrastructure of progress and hope. Our family - who turned on their villages, flags, kin, and lovers - erected a child on wobbly knees, who they only hoped would later learn to walk firm and fierce as an adult.
Endless labor and stars within reach, their vision was secured. They fought for their dream, they strained and bruised for the sake of a future, for life, for quality. But quality and breath were not theirs. They forsook the familiar and the ease for the sake of their children, and children's children, and... me.
Comfort, knowledge, convenience, efficiency, opportunity and wealth unimaginable - now not at my fingertips but in my hands, filling my fists and spilling over.
Mine, ours. Real, full life - lived out as the dream of fighters, those sweat-stained laborers and dreamers.
The city carries on. Life IS, all the more. Man has become one, everyone leveled together.
The wheel spins. The grapes burst on the vine. Mortality - humanity - has never seemed so close.
So many sights, sounds, smells. So real, so rich. Suffocating and drowning, yet enticing and drawing. The world grins indifference at each one and bears its terrible white bite at existence. Soft daylight beckons skepticism and the darkness of night reveals all.
New York - The city where mortality presents itself boldly and greets men warmly on streets. The sirens, the shrill piercing. The mysterious closed doors and sterile white staircases. The stars falling from the morning sky. The growling dogs. Always the unspoken fear, the apprehension secretly and quietly wrapping up the human heart, trumpeting around as determination, masquerading as a fight for the future. Real terrors, nightmares come alive, on top of dreams come true. A gnawing suspicion, uniting each stranger, yet distancing them in the grand moments of freedom when eyes lock and gazes hold fast, only for a brief instant, then furtively return to the world of independence and conquering.
Dragon devours dragon, and eagle befriends mouse. All are enemies, yet all war together.
Life, sleep, war - all conquered together as one.
The city of dreams, the city of the world, with no space to see it. No room to enjoy it. Best friends, neighbors, sidewalk-sharers - all together, all on the island, reaching out to the stars for space.
The ends of the earth have found their home together, every corner whispering new opportunities. There is no want. The world is here. The only place left to go is up.
