The Falling City

When I started living in Wellington, back in November, I was walking through the city and had a spark of creativity. I immediately got my notebook out and started jotting down some notes:

The city was always falling.
       Down through its own debris. Chips of concrete, broken pavements, rusted metals, snapped pipelines; shattered glass from unused windows, crumbling brick from derelict buildings, the rotted blankets and bones from withered carcasses of the long-dead occupants whom the city forgot to bury. Every piece of it fell as though gravity was divorced from time, and all the city could do was fall with it, tumbling down in an attempt to rebuild by falling faster than the speed of decay was able to maintain. Slowly, piece by piece, each particle would reattach to its original place of construction, pretending as though it had never left, never once been the particle so eager to add more aeons onto an eternity of decay and rebuilding.
       But still the city falls.
       And still the inhabitants fall with it, moving in forever descending spirals. Ropes of thought without action coil upwards into the ever-diminishing darkness of past. Like ghosts inhabiting a space that no longer exists.


For the last four months, between house duties, nursing a buggered knee, cooking dinners, and improving my relationship with the resident 12 year old who is fast becoming a teenager (all the usual stuff that other parent/authors do), I have been steadily plugging away at the idea that I envisioned as a short novel of no more than 20,000 words. Today, I completed a full draft of 28,400 words. I am really pleased with the outcome, but now starts the full editing and revision period.

I'm usually pretty reserved about sharing unpublished work with people, but this work is a satire on city life and reflects on personal identity and autonomy. When I get it in a more finalised state, and my reading friend signs it off, I will welcome anyone wishing to have a read and give feedback.