We need a view. If we had a view we could see. If we had a view we could call it a lookout. From the lookout we would see a vista. The vista would be of where we are. Where we are now would change. Where we are now would be part of the vista. The people up there looking down would see the vista. 

People would ascend to the lookout to see what’s below. People below would look up and wonder what the people on the lookout were thinking as they watched everything below. Then they would go to the lookout and they would know what is thought there. That’s the way it would work.

People below would look up and people above would look down. And then they would switch, or some would spend as much time as they could at the lookout and others would avoid the lookout, preferring to stay below. The lookout would allow people to get far away from where they are below to see more of what’s below, in less detail. 

Some people would like to stay below and appreciate the detail. Others who spent most of their time above would appreciate the view, or what we have already begun calling the vista. We have already begun calling a view of where we are now a vista, however, there is no vista, no view, because there is no lookout, not yet. 

That’s why I have called this meeting.
 
Last week’s firestorm exaggerated our city’s already exaggerated supply of abandoned buildings. These buildings, including the ones that were officially unoccupied before the firestorm, are now charred and unsuitable for any sort of official or unofficial occupation. The firestorm was such a successful firestorm because it fed on an already decrepit building stock for which our city has become nationally renowned. 

When I speak of the firestorm’s success, I am speaking from the firestorm’s perspective. The firestorm took many lives and we should respect anything capable of taking as many lives as the firestorm took. By speaking from the firestorm’s perspective, I extend respect to the firestorm. 

When I speak of our city’s national renown for decrepit building stock, I am not speaking of a renown that I respect. There is a word for the variety of renown for which our city has become known. 

Did we enjoy eavesdropping the jokes we overheard in areas where they have never known firestorms?

In other areas they know nothing of advanced toxicity. They know nothing about lakes of conglomerated toxicity beneath the streets that seeped into the foundations of our homes and worked their way into our water supply and ultimately fueled the firestorm caused by a single bolt of lightening last week? 

Do the people in other cities that are renowned for shipbuilding or wineries, for example, know anything about how rain mixes with sludge beneath the streets and overflows the sewers? 

Do people in other cities that are renowned for cattle breeding and swimming-pool construction know what it is like when a single bolt of lightening sets the majority of their city ablaze? 

Or do they think that because they live in an area that is clean and good, an area in which the people wear fresh-pressed clothing and drive clean vehicles through streets as clean as streets can be, do you think that they think that they would have survived the firestorm because they have seen that we survived the firestorm and seeing that we survived the firestorm they would place themselves among the survivors, given the option to have lived or to have died? 

Surely they would become fond of calling it a tragedy, but they rationalize the tragedy and they would think that they would never have been foolish enough to live in such a decrepit area, one in which sludge of advanced toxicity gurgled beneath the surface, waiting for a spark which would vaporize nearly two-thirds of our city’s long lost population. 

They would think this but never say this and it is possible that it is this ability to think but not say, that it is this ability to hold their tongues, that keeps them from being here today. 

Their ability to keep their mouths shut is why I am the one today who has called this meeting and am doing all the talking. I do not have the ability to keep my mouth shut. My mouth is open and it says what I think. If it were shut it would not be saying what it thinks because it would not be here to have the opportunity to speak to you today.