Everyday War : KEITH J. VARADI

In Pittsburgh, smog and streets once touched lips to form a fantastical liquid forest. On the weekdays, people would cycle through shirts like interns at training camp. These days, newly native eyeballs are kaleidoscopic binoculars through which search engines can be self-motivated to the point of being self-driven. An IP address in New Brunswick finds no results for Bruce Springsteen. This can be interpreted as a self-motivated (or self-driven) sign to give up on nostalgia. Fact: There is no crying in stadiums. Also, there is no crying in the South, either. You read a blank billboard built on the False Word of God and you want to cry, but in this light, all you can do is squint. You stare at a statue carved by the sweaty hands of a half-assed apologist and you want to cry, but in this heat, all you can do is sweat. People getting fired; people getting fired up. It’s a new millennium, and any sane person wonders: “Why would Millennials want to move to New York in this climate?” And it’s like every week, The New York Times publishes a freshly bourgeois article about Los Angeles, and instead of reading them anymore, I just watch strip malls strip down to nothing and entire hillsides drink gallons of Muscle Milk at the speed of Bravo-inspired intercuts. While I’m at the office, everyone else goes skinny-dipping like baristas with bones in hand. This is the new, and now, tongues wag into the night.

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