11
The city grows and keeps on growing. People vanish. Buildings spring up to take their places. The streets become full of vast, intricate activities. People have vanished but these activities keep on growing.
The city shakes with noises. A cloud of noises rises from the street and bursts slowly into names. Everywhere one turns, doors and windows chatter with names. Names run up and down the faces of buildings. Gilt names slant downward, porcelain names curve like lopsided grins. Names fly from banners, hang from long wires, lean down from rooftops.
The city is plastered with names. Tired men stop and blink. They mutter to themselves in the street, "Lets see, where am I?" Their eyes stare at an inanimate dance of names. Names fall out of the sky. An alphabet face with eyebrows, nose, lips and hair made of names winks and sticks out its tongue.
These are not the names of people but of activities. As the city grows the names pile up and reach higher. Names of things to eat, wear, see, feel, smell, dream of and die for—they become too many to see and far too many to read. They drift up and down the faces of the buildings and scamper over the pavements like a lunatic writing.
The vanished people no longer look at them. But the names continue to pile up and spread out. They are a city apart. They no longer offer clews to people. They are no longer advertisements yelping vividly out of the air, but a decoration. Inscrutable hieroglyphs that salute each other in the grave confusion of windows. They grimace with secret meanings at each other and keep each other company in the night sky. Like the people they too have become too many. As the city grows their meanings and purposes also vanish, leaving behind a comet's tail and a deaf and dumb good-bye.
The city grows and devours itself and ceases to become articulate in names. It shakes and howls senselessly. No one understands where the noises come from or why. Windows become too many to count. Activities double on themselves and tangle themselves up in other activities until each activity becomes a mystery to itself. Business men buried in business pause to blink at their desks and mutter, "Let's see, where am I?"
Underneath the activities and the comet's tail of names, the vanished ones crawl about their business of destinations. They have remained sedately unaware of their disappearance. They have barricaded themselves behind activities and for the most part they are silent. Their activities talk for them in a language easy to hear but difficult to understand. Furnaces, engines, factories, traffic—these talk. Their talk is very important. It is curious that for the simple business of keeping alive there should be so many activities necessary. It is also incomprehensible.
Among themselves people offer each other informations and interpretations. But these informations and interpretations are not of their souls but of their activities which have nothing to do with them except to hide them. They talk of business enterprise, of success, progress, civic development, industrial achievement, political ideals; of money made and money spent. This talk sounds very important. It becomes an important part of the confusion of activities.