Strolling before the city became shiny (2)

Or perhaps he almost lost control and almost ploughed into me.
Hitting an undulation in the tarmac, it seemed his attempt at turning the car followed the road perfectly – just as if his wheels were on tracks. Maybe there never was any danger? I mused on this as I walked on.
Rounding the pavement, the road snaked back about the rear of the tower. I crossed over to get a better view and the wind howled in my brain. The block, more impressive it now seemed, was desolate. Work on the higher levels had apparently ceased, perhaps due to the gale.
Old Hall Street itself was scarcely populated and as I watched the ramparts of the half finished tower, plastic bags floated mockingly in the breeze – like some Scooby-Doo ghost that would later be inevitably unmasked.
Two skate-punks scraped around a side street. An infamous city apparition, they quickly vanished. Their gothy apparitions fading, like their short-sleeve shirts.
There are side streets. So many side streets in the city. Places people barely seem to go. They’re not out of bounds. It’s not like you’d get stabbed for going into the wrong street.
People just ignore them, they either don’t notice they are there or they don’t care.
I noticed them only six months ago. This was about the time of my awakening. A time when I noticed a world I had ignored before, just like everyone else still seemed to be doing. It was about this time that I first needed to see my own blood.
So the side streets, yes. Essential, visit every quiet city centre street in Liverpool. So much more interesting than the beaten track. Side streets off Old Hall Street can lead to views of abandoned old Liverpool. Broken glass gives way to warehouses; dark, dusty, haunted by bustling dreams of life.
That life, that real life, now gone - all but for the tattered cobwebs and splintered floorboards that we can’t even touch anymore.
Someone touched them though, so imagine them. Stand in the street, quiet, no traffic, no access to anywhere, except the past. Anywhere you can get away from the people and see the true heart of the city then do so.
The people are now merely blood cells, pumping further and further from the heart that once sent them forth. But we’ve got to get back to the heart.

“This dream represented my situation at the time. I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque - just as I felt then.
But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that was why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the ‘pool of life’. The ‘liver’, according to an old view, is the seat of life - that which ‘makes to live’.” - Carl Gustav Jung