“Erg, I look like a tourist,” Jeff grumbled, fearing attire-ridicule from the super-cool crowd expected at the show. Scoops’ car jumped a speed bump-sized metal plate covering just another fissure on the dilapitaded 12th Street Bridge, lowering them into the West Bottoms. Jeff went airborne, slamming his la cabeza into the roof like a real Harry Henderson – “Ow!”
“Just stay close by me,” Katz said, “and no one will even notice how poorly you’re dressed.”
Jeff, laughing, “Is that a self-deprecating joke?”
“Um, I guess so. My wardrobe really is very small & pathetic. It’s pretty funny, I think. I don’t actually take it personally though. I mean, I don’t really identify myself with my clothing – it’s the least of my worries at this point.”
After that it was all wide eyes and noses on windows as they turned through the desolate streets between the decaying buildings, resting and popping out just down the block from 1323 Union. A train moseyed coal on down the line just a stone’s-throw away.
For many years, especially the original years, the West Bottoms was the heart of Kansas City. The area is thick with the past: French & Injun traders on the Santa Fe Trail, stockyards & cowboys, Union Depot & railyards, the 1903 flood, WWII & tank factories.
These days it’s mainly empty crumbling dead buildings so much more alive than any of the thrivers filled to the brim with the so-called living in the rest of the city. It’s a case study in the fullness of life surrounding so-called death; a perfect counter-point to the throbbing mass of lifelessness parading through Kansas City’s newest area, the Power & Light District. Perhaps its richness remains simply because it has for so long held off those people, Life’s tourists, so afraid of the past as to yelp upon glimpsing their very own shadow.
They will come though, soon, with their money, their hurried & constant automatic movements, their glazed eyes, their money. The money-grubbers will buy the buildings and make them to look like all the same places where the money-spenders, with their defective memories, have been trained to exchange their money for last time – remember last time, wasn’t that fun? Yeah, I bet I do remember that, I bet that was fun. I certainly felt like I was doing something. The other people like us seemed to think they were having fun, I bet I did too! Let’s try the newest version of the new place this time.
But not yet. And so it’s still there. It’s still alive. There’s still time.
“Do you know why they call this the Emerald Space?” Katz asked a tall, skinny, almost bumbish-looking character with a full beard and a flopsy army-green hat upon his head; he seemed comfortable enough to know all about it.
The first band was already playing, a gaggle of Iowans just down to be part of the show. The crowd was, at best, still en route.
“Because it’s green?” the character asked back.
True, the facade was green, but it was not emerald. There’s always something in a name. Still, Katz knew better than to press and instead relaxed.
That was the end of his investigational instigations. As is always the case with inspiration, it must be allowed to flow of its own accord. The best you can do to encourage it is to get your own self – thoughts, desires, insecurities – as much out of the way as possible. Katz was not there to pry, to extract information from the experience; he was there to watch & listen, to be aware of all information that came to him, both internally & externally, in this space. He would not jump to conclusions, presumptions; he would examine how the information changed him, allow it to change him right into his future.
Mostly, of course, this called for silence & stillness. And so he spent the night walking extremely slowly, being aloof; conversing, sure, barely, but mostly standing just removed from the discussions; lots of looking around with a wide-angle lense; lots of focusing attention on subtle reactionary feelings within his self, aroused associations & memories; lots of listening to others; lots of cigs.
“So have you talked to Frances yet?” Jeff inquired about a female friend he’d recently introduced to Katz, lighting their cigarettes.
“No. I only became her friend on Facebook,” Katz replied.
“I thought that was the whole point,” Jeff laughed.
“Really? Yeah, I guess. I don’t know what the point was. I’m interested. I’d like to know her but she’s not here, you know. She doesn’t seem too interested in being in KC. She’s probably going back to France or something. I’m pretty sure she’s gone anyway, right?”
Koney, Sweetums, Kaos and Silly Dilly – the acb’s – strolled up with a fan, an Emerald Space resident. Silly Dilly was percolating, peppering her with questions about the place.
“How many people live here? How much is it? Who owns it? What’s it like to live here; in the winter; the summer?”
Bravo, Silly Dilly – Bravo. He wasn’t just curious; he was determined, hatching schemes for the residential takeover of the Emerald Space. Katz couldn’t agree more.
Another train cruised by at hopping-speed.
“You gotsta love them trains,” Scoops said.
“Oo ya,” Katz agreed. As the sound drowned out the nearby conversations, it reminded him of Crumbs’ old place in Chicago, which remembrances always came with a hefty side of Don. He liked trains, trains of all types, especially these, the old-schoolish ones. But this was not about his own preferences or endurances. He scrunched up his face, “The noise could be an issue.”
There was talk of striking a deal with the trains then, re-routing them if need be. The space was becoming their very own place. They’d make it theirs, and the world would adapt them. Silly Dilly was planning the layout of the living quarters: “See, in the summer you just move the Super Nintendo into the basement…”
“The perfect place to build a community, really,” Katz said, eyes twinkling.
The second act kicked up their jams, and Katz maxed his relax on the couch, toe-tapping. The crowd was still disappointing. Where were Nick & Nora, where were the cool high-schoolers sneaking out to chase the thrills of music & times, locales. This was their perfect opportunity. Did they not exist in KC anymore? Worrisome.
He imagined Seattle, the prospects. It felt very self-sufficient, with consistent progress and steady inspiration – the very things Katz with his sprint & rest style had so lacked, for always even. How he had struggled to balance his life in the ways Seattle seemed to offer; how he had hated on himself for always failing.
But wait, there’s more! Seattle also felt like deep breaths of fresh salt-watery air, pine needles – lush, frolicky, emerald. And that’s when he realized: Seattle is the Emerald City.
His brain flurried with thought, worries. He was cheating here, trying to cram a square Emerald Space into a round Emerald City hole. There was no Wizard here. The Wizard was all the way out there, where he clearly should be. How could he have missed that before? He’ll move out there, write his shit, it’ll be a big hit, and the Wizard will then send him home better than ever, ready to love and be loved, flourishing, with even money and power enough to help. He was just afraid. This whole time, he’d only really been afraid, treading water for fear of progressing.
These thoughts circled around the inside rim of his head like one of those circus motorcycle daredevils zooming around on the walls inside the steel-egg cage. The band ended their set, and Katz stumbled outside for yet another ciggie. He took in the West Bottoms; he loved it there. He relaxed, calmed & quieted his mind, slowly turned back toward the venue and, for the first time that night, spotted a simple cardboard sign very prominently placed in the window of the Emerald Space.
The sign read, “Your Future.”
Talk about a sign! The rest of the night was glorious. The crowd thickened. Them acb’s put on a truly impressive show, as if reluctantly teaching the other bands: “See, these are hits, and this is how you perform them and get the smiling bodies bouncing.”
Katz even dared the collapse of the universe, shooting Don a carefree texter: “This is katz. Check out chapter 1 @ transparencyproject.wordpress.com.” Waffling, re-considering, then finally choosing the winking devil smiley over old plain-jane jolly-yellow winking smiley as his sign-off. So stupid it’s got to be funny…right?
Electricity still seemed to pop throughout the crowd as it oozed back outside for the post-show chatterfest. There was talk of going out, of course. But what they settled on was at least as exciting. Katz & Scoops were headed back to Holly for a smorkle and a viewing of The Forgotten with Mr. Marbles; Jeff’s sights were locked onto Sonic.
On the ride home, Katz contemplated the Wizard, the trip to the Wizard. The Wizard of Oz wasn’t really all-powerful or even all-knowing. He was just a trickster. All he really did is trick beings who couldn’t believe in their own selfs to believe in him, to fear and therefore imbue with power his lame histrionics so that they would actually listen to him when he told them exactly what they needed to hear to believe in their own selfs. And he provided cheap, imitative reminders of their own powerful natures. They already had the power to do whatever they so very wanted; they’d had the power all along.
Katz sat there in the dark, grinning like a fool, his eyes tracing the leaves & lawns on the landscape as it zoomed past.
“You should talk more to that girl, Frances,” Jeff suggested, amused. “I’ll be interested to hear if you do.”
Katz again admitted his own interest.
“I think she’s moving to China,” Jeff added.
“That’s hilarious,” Katz said. “I have quite a history of meeting girls on the verge of disappearing into China.”
Transparency Project 
