THE FIVE BURROWS
1.
The city is an island and an island is a ship that never sails.
The city is a vessel for animals.
A long time ago, before the island was a city, it was a crumb of land bobbing in an ocean tea. But even then, it was jammed with plants and animals. The island has always teemed with life, moored as it is at a powerful juncture of rivers, the ocean, greater islands, and a whole roiling continent. It is hard now to picture the island of before, in its green state crisscrossed by streams and edged by marshes, as it has been changed so thoroughly by wave after wave of arrival and violence, construction and reconstruction. But before or after, this place was ever vital. This was never just any old island; it has always been a planet in miniature, a bubble of disordered life.
When the outsiders came they came in messy herds. Foreign birds arrived in flocks, and multitudes climbed from rough wooden crafts, all knees and heaves over the silty rocks.
Once grounded, some lay for a long time, crying for beloved friends lost at sea. Others put their grief aside and got straight to business. Whatever the attitude, all newcomers carried some memory, potent or cloudy, of the homes they’d left behind. They hoisted various flags and commenced the same battles that had driven them from their old lands in the first place.
More, then more arrived. You’ve never seen such a multitude. Everyone squeezed in and then did it again. So tight did it become that the ground in some areas disappeared beneath the crush of living creatures. The island swayed and creaked but did not sink because this was a ship of bedrock.
Native gulls turned above flocks of European starlings strategizing in trees.
The creatures from away brought with them panic. Gruesome histories trailed like a putrid smell. They had firm notions of how life should be lived, and they intended to impose them.
The island trembled.
Somebody cobbled a street where a soft path had been. Somebody drew a map. Somebody carried out a massacre.
Animals tore into one another. They spread diseases and infections. A pool of blood formed, dried up, then turned into flakes that the wind carried away. There is no story of a city that is not also a story of brutality. There is no story of brutality that has not been retold as one of heroism.
The invasive species began right away to mythologize themselves. They renamed everything. They got into fights with one another, and whoever won renamed places once again. They built houses, stores, bars, and jails out of the island’s trees. The city burned again and again, and they rebuilt in whatever architectural fashion was current. Everything was brutal and everyone died. The living tore down old buildings and erected new ones in their place. They renamed streets and buildings after their dead, only for the living to die in turn.
To repress the psychic chaos that swirled inside, the living turned to numerology. They began to count everything and categorize what they’d counted. Someone measured out the whole island then divided it with a grid. Grids sent the message that everything was under control. Meanwhile, more arrived and more died.
“Don’t panic,” they murmured to one another as they drew out long, straight lines.
Once they had the grid on their map, they set about filling every square on the real-life land. They built great halls and courthouses, they built fire stations and granaries. Around the edges they erected docks and strung bridges. Larger and larger ships kept bringing in more beings and things. Some grumbled because by now they saw themselves not as invasive, but rather as new kinds of native species. The community worked on complicated myths to explain away the violence at the core of their city-making.
Streets and avenues continued to creep, until they covered not just the first island but surrounding islands as well.
See! Here a beam, there a reservoir. Here a scaffold, there a retaining wall. Here a beer hall, there a bakery. Here a sweatshop, there an armory. Here a train station with vaulted ceilings painted celestial blue, and there a system of grease-black tunnels.
The living paved over old cobbling. They numbered and lettered the new trains. After vigorous debate, Helvetica was chosen as the official typeface for all signs. Buildings grew tall. Apartments stretched along streets like rows of stalls in a stable. Rooms proliferated inside like cells in a hive.
As the cityscape expanded, it also shrank. It came to feel as if the whole population lived together in one big house. Bricks, wallpaper, matted fur, insulation, granite, saliva, glue, venetian blinds, mud, twigs, vinyl siding, steel beams—they overlapped and merged. Architecture and infrastructure blurred into continuous surface. This great combine creased and flipped, so that private was public, and public concealed itself in plain view. Looking out might as well be looking in, as building walls made streets into halls. Foyers led to front doors, led to bedrooms with views of—if one was lucky—the Hudson River or the Kosciuszko Bridge.
In summer, sun pounded the sidewalks and the heat intensified the smell of everything. Citizens put plants into pots and put these pots on their sills. Youths leapt into turquoise pools that sat in the middle of emerald parks. Air conditioners hummed dangerously overhead. The city was like a pizza oven, and the inhabitants were greasy little toppings. These toppings felt weak or furious. Vendors sold chili mango and ices. Smoke and steam billowed up to join the clouds. The clouds grew tense. Rain fell heavy. The storm cleared up. Everyone felt happy, but then the heat would return, bringing with it fury and fatigue.
In late summer, places closed for vacation. Those who could, fled. Then September would come, school would start, and everything would be open and packed once again.
Fall was the most beautiful.
Then came winter. The first snow was nice, but every subsequent just coated the frozen street filth. The mélange melted and refroze and the city would be miserable for months.
Winter lasted half a year or more before the winds blew in spring, when every tree exploded with pollen and flowers. Gingko and linden released their funky cream perfumes. The island went mad with joy and allergies.
The streets stank. Storefronts emitted puffs of salon chemicals and cooking grease, dung and bleach, fungus and air freshener. When crowds on the train pressed together they released whiffs of cocoa butter and Chanel.
Trash piled up. Workers took it away. There was so much stuff that even nice things cycled into the trash. Whoever got tired of their shoes just left them on the stoop. Someone else would put them on. Creatures threw out whole bedroom sets and decent abstract paintings. Socks, umbrellas, books, and incense could be bought on any street corner.
The crush, the wealth, the waste of wealth, all the tight quarters and inward-facing windows, made residents obsess over their bodies, their fur and feathers. They ignored seasonal dress and followed instead the gulf streams of fashion. Tatters in winter and suits for summer. Horn rims and corno portafortunas, buffalo plaids and leopard prints, socks and sandals—it all came and went, then returned later, reimagined. Everything was beautiful artifice.
Creatures obsessed over the unwritten laws of class, order, family, genus, and species. Mayors and councilmembers chattered among themselves, and with bankers. It had to do with ideology. It had to do with money.
The island, which was by now a city absolute, was full. One could get whatever one wanted, but walking around the block cost more than whatever you had in your pocket. A very few had way too much, some had enough, and many had nothing. Many moved away because they were tired, but plenty stayed because they didn’t have enough to leave. Things got violent once again.