Gizmo

An antique silk screening machine, a portion of a hand washing unit? Those are just guesses, I could be way off. It’s old, the mechanics simple, whatever function it fulfills requires gears and movement. Components roll. Some one placed it here purposely. This is one of those lots down by the Power House District where some developers started a project and never went beyond the project. Years of stasis. Rust now coats the pipes piled within the rent-a-fence fences, the hope of new development now a past whose distance from us is ever increasing.  Has new technology replaced this gizmo or has the purpose of the gizmo become irrelevant to how we live now? Metal rusts. Developments conceived of, then construction halts. Factories that once made things people bought, gave jobs to men who raised families, now just desolate buildings, blighted lots. The social tragedy this gizmo invokes only deepens with our scrutiny of apparent context.