Eastern Massachusetts Gothic, Part 2
In Salem, tourism is a thriving industry, built on the infamy of the Witch Trials. Witches, ghouls, and ghosts walk in costume in Derby Square, handing out fliers for nighttime ghost tours. Perhaps this is how Salem buries its dead, you think, realizing that you never even learned all of the names of the 19 victims of the Salem Witch Trials. The Grim Reaper walks up to you. He hands you a flier with a discount for a nighttime ghost tour.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people pass Boston’s homeless on the streets each day, averting their eyes and quickening their pace as they walk by people holding donation cans, signs, pleas for money or assistance, some acknowledgement of their plight. You walk by too, and you always feel a twinge of guilt. Sometimes you contemplate buying one of these people a sandwich or a coffee, or asking them if they’re alright. Most people wonder the same thing. But no one stops; kindness disrupts the monotonous, soulless routine of daily life. You continue walking.
In your upper-middle class suburban town, you are always told to avoid the poorer neighboring towns or cities. They’re dangerous, you’re told, dirty and mean and not meant for you. They’re places to be ridiculed, scorned, and feared. You must stay where it’s safe, in your social bubble. Here, you’re told, everything is fine. People are kind, the schools are good, the community is close. Stay in the community, you’re told. And you stay.
After Halloween, many pumpkins remain on porches, stoops, and sidewalks, left to rot. Their carved features become distorted as the structure collapsed on itself, blackening as it decays and liquifies. You begin to avoid the houses guarded by Jack'o Lanterns.
Some mornings, you wake with a start to the sound of gunshots and fleeing birds. It takes a few moments to realize that you are not the target, and that the firing comes from across the border in New Hampshire. At nightfall, you can’t sleep; the sound of fireworks and rockets going off from across the Merrimack River keeps you up. Fucking New Hampshire.
The shores of rivers are plentiful with trash turned treasure. You find clay pipes, marbles, bottles, and broken china fragments with beautiful patterns. You also find dead fish and animal bones. There was that time you found what looked like human teeth. You wonder how they got there, but you’re not sure you really want the answer.
Everyone has a Harvard or BU sweatshirt. And yet, you know no one who goes to Harvard, and only a handful who go to BU. You never bother to say anything about it.
There are also a lot of people with Cape Cod t-shirts and sweatshirts. You assume they’re not from around here. Almost no one goes to the Cape. It will be underwater soon enough anyway.
kianamaiart
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
origamiaround
prguitarman
