The impulse for US hegemony in the world
From clouds and nocturnal mists of memory emerged outlines of arriving ships—they were the Anglo-Saxons and the Dutch. Ghostly silhouettes of Indians with their indistinct faces painted white looked toward the sea. Out of ocean mists then came waves of blacks, with round faces and frightened eyes. New houses crept up the island of Manahatta like waves of the sea. Blue and gray uniforms and cannons and flags and luxurious mansions rose from the ground. Layer after layer—boatloads of dark foreigners with cardboard suitcases and packed ships departing with soldiers, railroads like spokes of a wheel and subway tracks in tunnels, parks with mansions on one side, slums on the other, dandies and rag pickers. The colors were speaking, crying and screaming, brilliant under powerful searchlights from above, the colors of the skins, white, yellow, red, brown, black. Palaces, cinemas and vaudeville halls, beer parlors, art galleries, train stations and stadiums, ships on white rivers turning black, smoke and steam, pale women and silent girls seated in long lines of old urban factories. In the night his story was exploding onto the walls of Arch No. 6. The banks, the Stock Exchange façade shrouded in ticker tape and bands of strikers whose ranks are gradually transformed into homeless sleeping in doorways, in parks, in subway stations. And in the lower right corner ranks of policemen in blue face to face with legions of the city’s homeless.)
Gaither Stewart
Gaither Stewart, Senior Contributing Editor for Cyrano’s Journal/tantmieux, is a novelist and journalist based in Italy. A longtime student of Russian culture he maintains particular interest in developments affecting Russia. His essays and dispatches are read widely on many leading Internet venues. His collections of fiction, Icy Current Compulsive Course, To Be A Stranger and Once In Berlin are published by Wind River Press. (www.windriverpress.com ). His recent novel, Asheville, is published by Wastelandrunes, (www.wastelandrunes.com).
