Follow me.

Turn right. Well, I don't have much of a choice, do I? I mean... there's empty pavement to my left, but a destination unknown, and there's obstructions in front, and where I came from is behind me - so I'm not going to go any other way. I'm walking this way already, let me off for a few seconds [give me some respite, please]. There's a cross-roads here. Who put this kind of contra-flow in? This is a fucking nightmare [limitless possibilities here, Jack]. If I turn left I'm going to be deviating, and I haven't given myself enough time for that kind of pleasurable distraction. If I turn right I could I suppose hook round up the eponymous, but there's kids up there in their millions and it's intimidating and -frankly- bothersome [scared of kids?] Fine, I will go straight: sliced cross-sectioned suburbia leaves me with limited and depressing pseudochoices merely to enable me to feel free in my seclusion and deprivation [what? Really?] Now I can cross the road, but law dictates I should hold ba--but the sun is on the other side of the str--but the law says I should wai--but I'm fucking cold [but the shade is the same]. This is confusing to me, I'll stay where I am. I didn't come this way to make original decisions without counsel -- this should be a cooperative movement. Fuck. I should have gone the other way, there's a cooperative store--oh, it's OK [there's one ahead]. Which way have I come? To the right is the same as to the front? If I walk back past my house I'll end up to the right? Christ. I'll just keep plodding [pounding]. Oh, here's a crossroads. I guess it's good I stayed in the shade because now I'm at the legal, island-assisted crossing. Oh look where I'm going: that's a glossy window-display [isn't it pretty]. You know what, I think I do need some new furniture; the kitchen would love a chez-loun--no it wouldn't, stop being idiotic [stupid]. Walk past: why is this tanning salon open at 7am? That's confusing. I don't want to cross the road now, thanks, look at the fucking sanctioned multiculturalism; that would be less obvious if it was a burrito-man in a taco hat waving a fucking enchilada flag in people's faces [where are the other nations? I thought this was the UN?] You know where you're going. Ah ha, the place I missed by going straight -not right- but could have reached by going backwards -but not left- but the place that I've reached by my forward inclination -predilection?- I don't know. It doesn't matter. "Yes, just the paper - thanks. Oh, hold on. I see you have an offer on everything I shouldn't buy? Yes, thanks, I'll take the shop." Well. That was an interesting move [that was fatalism]. Ah, my coffee shop. Why must you be across the road from me? See if I'd gone to the sun--but then I would have miss-- I didn't have t-- yes, you did. OK. I did [I'm sorry]. 'See you tomorrow'. Now where the hell am I? Ah, I see in monochrome - yes, yes, I'll go this way, this seems convenient [but where is it taking me?] Well. This is genteel, I feel. I rather like the smell of freshly cut-grass. That's delightful. Why, it's so green here. The other side is a fucking cesspit compared, let's laugh at it [oh, sorry, I forgot you couldn't, you're pavement]. I see that it's fenced off though. Oh, I see, the fence is so that we don't vandalise the natural beauty. How is it that I enjoy the natural beauty? 'From afar'. Didn't see you there [conscience?] We are going farther and farther [or is it further and further?] Thank it -- commercials and modernity, I will plunge head first into yo--wait, what's the signage signifying, too many signs to signify in syllables a semblance of severity of sapience in sense [lost]. So let me get this straight: if I go left I get to the beach -?- but if I go straight on I get to the beach that has a promenade with shops -?- and if I go right -why would I go right?- then I can continue my journey free from prejudice -?- is that right -?- wai--they all go the same way [that's a circuit, what a construct].

Chorus: Pray, the grand architect enters. Prithee gaze adoringly.

Ceremonial Priestess: He comes! He comes. Here He comes!

Assembled masses: Arrive! Take me unto your bosom, oh Saviour!

Chorus: Fall still, children of the World.

Ceremonial Priestess: As you were.

--A door swings slowly open, on silent, gilt hinges.--

Grand Architect: And Lo! born unto the mess was order imposed, rigorous arts of the abacus and logarithms applied so with a shade of this, and a daub of tautness. Tacit acceptance, acquiesce.

Assembled masses: It's beautiful. It's Beaaaaaaaaaautiful.

Sorry. Internalised a breath too far. Not sure where I am anymore. Bloody hell [that thing goes round and round]. Fuck it. Doesn't matter, particularly, I guess they'll all go roughly the same way. I guess if I just put my foot on and go with the flow I'll end up at a destination - and perhaps it's not the destination which matters, rather how you get there [skewed, needs work]. I'll go right. That seems to have been working for me so far. It's like an urban maze; a sprawling landscape blotted against the cold, luscious vegetation of this here World. Plump right and the pavement changed. I'm against materialism on the right, injury on the right, and my way forwards is barred; our designer foretold problems, but left the details vague so I'm unsure what it is I am supposed to do. Ah

DIVERSION. FOLLOW THIS SIGN.

I love it! It's the elder brother, fully-formed, and stoutly-equipped elder brother of the signifier I saw earlier; this one is concise and taciturn in its appraisal and ministrations. Clearly this sign is a diversion -deviation- so I will follow it thusly, though how a material has the characteristics of a leader I am not sure [but you are following it, aren't you? -i'm not exactly an exact case study though, am I? I mean, I'd follow anything you told me to; this isn't my comfort-zone, this is a jungle of shapes and noises; you, the friend illuminating the crushing brightness of the dark-zone, know that which I fail to see- perhaps]. I see your directions, and I raise you a human consciousness.

Signpost: Here is an instruction, I suggest you follow it thusly.

Me: I see your instruction, and raise you sentience.

Signpost: A calm move, Sir, but predictable. I see your rationalisation and question your motive.

Me: Touché. I call your determinism -wait you're suggesting that I've been destined to be here since I came out of the house and turned right?- but in order for my agreement we need a compromise. I sugge--who suggests?-- st that I'm capable of figuring out where to go [so why so many signs?] without your aid, but will take it when proffered anyway.

Signpost: Unacceptable. Please step into the road and stick close to the curb.

Me: I can but listen.

So I step down onto the road, taking care to stick close to the curb. Now to the right of me there is a gaping abyss where the shop used to stand, and to the left there is -at close proximity we should add- our impending mortality [the cliché stands that fear of death is life, but this doesn't add up]. I'm confused. This is an inanimate construction imposed on humanity. Step. Step. Step. Step. Freedom. I'm out of your trap, Signpost; you cannot beat that which you cannot control when the control has finished and you are in my control. 'OK, yes, no, I understand. I'll keep going'. I honestly don't know left from right, up from down, side from side, sky from ground, noise from noise, sight from sight; images flowing past and I'm trying my best to thi-- to know--nk if they're images or reality or if this is even happening. I'm pulled along by this surging wave of cause and effect. Here is another animal! I will follow you, my anthropomorphic friend. You remind me of a lesser time. An easier time when I was shut up deep within myself, afraid and unadventurous. You remind me of a lesser me, one not caught up in clandestine outings and subversive wanderings [concentrate!] Here I am.

Honestly. I'm right here. In front of you. Behind you.

Oh my goodness. We're on repeat. The truth of causation is clear to me: I walk through this garden and I'm back at the prohibited natural glory. Time has become unimportant, deconstructed to a mere signifier; set aside because I'm living this again and again and I'm not sure how. There are two of me and I'm staring at myself, staring at myself, and I'm gazing longingly into my own dazed expression and I'm feel claustrophobic, and the trees are swaying gracelessly in a breeze I can no longer feel -why can't I feel the wind anymore?- and I'm praying, I'm reaching out towards salvation of my own, and our hands touch. Except they're not our hands, they're my hands. I'm back. I'm here again. I'm just living through a repeat [we're a rerun, people]. 'Let us conduct an exercise'. Draw yourself on the back of your hand, and imagine that picture where you are, and you where the picture is. Now we're strolling gaily through the green and the brown and the black and the grey; but we cannot escape that the floor is yellow, and that the side is grey, and that the sky is black, and that swaying, swaying gracelessly, is the brown [this I don't understand. This connection I do not understand]. I'm inside now -how did I get inside? Have I become so infiltrated into this system that even without thinking I end up where my physical self takes me, not where I want to go?- and there's reams of something that smells like my childhood and there's signage everywhere. I'm in LA or I'm on the Strip or something, this isn't where I live or where I work. This door only opens one way and I question it [why do doors only ever open one way when the technology exists for them to open both?] There is a sign on the other side:

DOOR BROKEN. PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR.

I need to change that and stick it to my face: ME BROKEN. PLEASE USE OTHER ME. Then again, when we met back there he didn't seem any more aware than me is [this is intended for me and I and you and we and our and their]. I can still see the outside; this is illusion and I'm living inside allegory and fraud. This is fraud and we should press charges against it, except we can't because this is simply a manifestation of the machinations of the mechanisations of the modern monolithic geographic masturbations. Why is there another road here [who applied logic to the logicless?-whomadeupwords?- Who stringently ruled lines through suburbia?] Why do I have to cros-wait I don't have to cro--of course you have to cross. I'll cross. This is paved glory, this is architecturally magnificent. This is a triumph; a lasting testimony of the power of humanity. You. Road. Walkway. There is nothing and there is everything in nothing. 'Rigorously in English please' ['Polite as you like, Sir']. I can see where I'm going, and there's nothing barring my path, and my legs are working under their own power, my physical self detaches and volition is nowhere and it's anyone's for the taking; and it's taken by you [that which rules]. I am defeated as I arrive as a popinjay for your own amusement. I am confused, and bemused, and perturbed, and concerned, and I am fucking lost. I've arrived and I could have arrived with my eyes closed: I ask if it's conditioning or intention. I walk into a shop and there are things tempting me, I leave the shop and I am prevented from excursion because there is design in detail. You cannot but walk the paths chosen for you; a deviation is merely that -temporary- and it will lull you, it will sing you a lullaby, and become a muted, constant buzz in your ear. Your transgression becomes failure, and when you finally realise it's futile to go but where you are supposed to you realise the inconsequentiality of your very existence. It's not that fate decided where you should go: no, it is a determinist bureaucracy hellbent on taking your liberties, quashing your freedoms, and imposing control on the structure of your being.

You cannot go where the city doesn't want you to go. You cannot leave the path already set for you: a chain of events unprecedented for its mutations and variants; an attacker you cannot predict, with no antecedent warning: a changing behemoth in the desert of your failures. As soon as you awake your decision is made without thought from you; one move will set you on your course and you cannot resist that -- the pull is too strong, subconsciously. We blame societal pressures; "We didn't want to be late." You didn't want to be there, but the people who ordered this city did.

Mayor: I'll take a City.

Designer: Is that to have-in or take-away?

Mayor: Either.

Once the designer set to work you were lost. Because ultimately you are but a player on a grand stage, and that stage doesn't allow for your trials and your tribulations and your tax and your testicles. It doesn't care about your kids or about your loves and your hates and your likes and your dislikes and your friends and your enemies. The City takes you on a course, and by the fact that it does so you take yourself on a course without intention. The City and You are concepts linked from the moment of your conception and there is no escape. There cannot be equivocations with this familiarity. Lose or fight and lose.

Teacher: For homework please research psychogeography so that you can be of use to me when it comes to doing my dissertation. Thank you, and goodnight.