CIRCUIT CITY EPIPHANY by Tom Lyford

Suddenly it was all clear in a flash!


My little hometown: nothing more

than a circuit diagram etched into

the hide of a big blue planet! The

cars and trucks and schoolbuses

and bikes and pedestrians...

mere electrons flowing into and

out of 'town' off the Terminal Pike

over copper in-roads with names

like Positive Parkway and

The Electron Expressway,

slowing noticeably as they cross

narrow little resistor bridges...

some taking the path of least resistance and

pulling right into Municipal Capacity Parking

over by the DC overpass right after

The Junction

while others pull in to the Battery Park section... 

to fill up and head back out on the highway

via The Line Road Connector...



And us? Why, we’re just some redneck,

low-tech, backwater (and a bit old-fashion)

operation up here in this neck of the board's

boondocks...! Our traffic: relatively very minimal.

The truth? 'Current' affairs are practically

non-existent, and most of us here don't even

have even a negligible meter reading on what it is,

exactly, that we do... in the overall schematic of things.


Not that we give that much of a rat's butt…

not really. Hell, for all we know we probably

amplify, or rectify, or filter something or other...

Who really knows...? But anyway, what the hey…


You might call it 'sour grapes,' but we’re just

pretty much grateful that we don’t have to live

the fast-pulsed, high-voltage, high-tension,

high-tech, top-of-the-line, cutting-edge life

that regulates our highly-developed, urban

metroplex neighbor across the board: