Gangs of Bay Station Island

image courtesy of Murphy Art Elliot

Our satellite is an otherwise gorgeous collection of enclosed hives where the Phoebes and their song flourish and they are the ninth toughest gang on this particular asteroid, their voices the melody behind the backdrop of random and non-random traffic satellite traffic.

The neighboring participants sense me at the top of the stairs and I’ll just bide my time. If I am more still than they are (and they are walking their dog, so what choice do they really have) eventually they must acknowledge my unmovingness.

Is that what all social interaction is, acknowledging first to those who are most unmoved? “Is everything okay?” “What’s wrong?” “How are things?” “How are you?”... in sales they teach us that every question is a power move, establishing dominance over the object spoken to by demanding an answer from it. Without words we only have our motion, our body language with which to try and assay our relationship to the other.

Eventually he says “good morning” and I answer back “mornin!” They don’t seem to mind my put on cheekiness which I hate doing but my neighbors, I hate to say, are essentially strangers and that is true of everyone who lives on this asteroid, they don’t want their neighbors getting too close to them, we don’t spend time in each other’s abodes, we leave well enough alone because its too much emotional baggage overlapping our practical baggage and this is where we are defeated as a community, whether we want to admit that or not.

My gang, the renters, is only the twelfth toughest gang on the asteroid. I have to mind my Pints and Quarts.