RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Saturday, June 10

SONG OF THE DAY: Wondering


Fences are assholes, and one of my favorite asshole fences, for all it represents, is the fake ass wrought iron fence along the train yard in Belmont, Charlottesville, which separates an old part of the yard with a coal tower where delinquents used to fuck around until a teenage girl got killed there years ago, from the actual still operational yard. The coal tower stretch has been a road for a while and now all these expensive ass townhouses and an "urban living" apartment building have gone up, and the fence keeps everybody jogging along the bike path safe from whatever vagrancy or minimal industry might still be going on in the barely functional yard. And Belmont is starting to creep in closer on the other side as well, from the southern end, with the old office building there being renovated into apartments, and the houses in that part rising in value at a crazy rate. Won't be long until another fence goes up most likely. I find it hilarious to an extent, because all the folks living good comfortable lives for the most part, at least financially, in those new townhouses and all, don't want the industrial blight, perpetuating this myth that all the hard work to have a society is just magically done by unseen elves (the poor) that keep everything functioning smoothly in the exceptional way America was god blessed. A few blocks over, there's a giant mural of the train yard done by a Richmond artist, hearkening back to an older era when people actually had jobs in train yards. There's other murals like that nearby (and anywhere that's being gentrified from old industrial abandonment zone to new thriving renamed neighborhood in any city around America), probably a little brewery that's popped up too, with either the brewery or some of their beers named after defunct industries or local landmarks, pretending to honor the memory while actually just exploiting the ghosts they refuse to acknowledge. I pray that the trickster gods of working folks rise up from the creosote dust left behind from their existence, and haunt these assholes by blowing through that asshole fence. We no longer have wrong side of the tracks, because everything's been settled so long, but we most definitely still got wrong side of the fence, everywhere. One side, you're good, but on the other, you're a threat. And your politics don't matter at all, to be honest. It's just what you're born into.

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