Soft, New, Parade, Part One

"Soft," New, Parade, just begun, ... cars and beasts ... roll down the crowd-filled Street. All the engines "hum." All the cylinders "run." Eyes open wide. Hearts sink. Under a rising Tropical sun, the nearby ocean lies gleaming, washing across the horizon. Strange, ... glory and iniquity --- here veiled, there all but exposed --- march side by side in the passing Cavalcade. Narrow times narrow minds narrow lives ***** Narrow trucks --- made to fit narrow avenues --- cough down the narrow Street. ***** Narrow scooters purr onward --- in a pinch --- through the summer haze. ***** Saints and sinners alike mill w/ impunity at the roadside. Innocents all (once, at least) and welchers all (given time), they push to the fore now to get a better look at the noisy New Spectacle in Motion. They ooohh and they aaahh as it rattles by, this new work in progress, this natural tendency to evolve. The faces in the crowd here --- like light through a prism --- break into colors. They're the faces of the righteous, the iniquitous, and the merely mistaken. And they're the faces of the good, the bad, and the more good than bad; and it's more a question of, not what is perceived, but, rather, who it is that perceives. It's meaning only in the eye of the beholder (too many human moving parts to master, too many human realities to juggle at one time). The one-ton elephant in the room --- the one that no one dares mention --- squats immovably in the middle of the road. The emperor fiddles to the fire burning down the city around him. It's a mere dog-and-pony show w/ all the bells and whistles ringing. It's a world gone ape --- ears flat back --- running amok, turning the worm that in time turns the rest of the tide along w/ it. The New "Soft" Parade snakes onward, that dark predator in the window. Deer, standing as if frozen in their tracks, stare wide-eyed into the headlights bearing down on them. The Matrix unfolds seamlessly, buttressed by rampant insouciance. Steam builds up and, released, moans. The "rubber hits the road." Big wheels turn, grinding through the Sunshine-filled world, through the "best of all worlds," and through the "worst one that they can offer." Narcotic and numbing, confusion and failure --- even by design --- distract, divide, and conquer. Artificially encouraged and induced, mutual bitterness and suspicion are riven through everyone and everything.