this monkey's gone to heaven

The giant gorilla painted in plywood that towered over the abandoned go-kart track across from the zoo has been there as long as The Peonage remembers, and it is with sadness that we note its demise. I used to see it every day when I'd catch the bus down to the zoo, and thankfully I documented it (that's not my picture below but it was on the Internets and convenient) before it disappeared. So often things disappear before they can be memorialized. I guess that kind of thing is inevitable. It was a part of the landscape that I loved, the embodiment of the quirky desolation of a depopulating city that inevitably retained its sense of humor despite the collapse of all surroundings.

The tawdry excuses for monuments and markers continue to be erected and then blotted out by the continuations of time and development, of one replaced by another. I embrace the strangeness because regardless of the context, it at least provides a change of scenery from the encroaching monoculture of strip malls and chain stores and subdivisions with nature-referencing names that obliterate the beautiful and wild. If we are to build, to cover earth with concrete, can it at least be interesting?