Cities are germs under a

blacklight;

glass that has been stepped

on, cracks spintering outward;

landscape

separating and

exposing earth's fiery,

red core

oozing up toward

broken crust; Citizens don't

look like

ants as much as they

do fireflies; huge swarms, so

many

they don't seem to move

at all, just like circruitry

on a

computer - clearly

active, yet eerily still.

More than

anything, the ground

blends into the horizon

and looks

like the night. Pulsing,

twinkling stars all across

black land

-scape. We're so concerned

about discovering our

ever

so mysterious

cosmos, we don't see greatness

in the

universes we've

built ourselves. The illusion

is so

believable that

I would open the bean-shaped

airplane

window and dive out,

convinced

I was flying rather than falling.