I stand at a crosswalk in a strangely quiet part of the city. Looking up, a billboard stands against the blue sky—perfectly blank, brilliantly blank—like a giant piece of paper suspended in the air.

People walked past on the sidewalk carrying all sorts of loudly-colored fabrics: briefcases, phones, phones receiving 'Messages' and 'Contacts' and work texts from companies. Clouds occasionally drifted past, sculpting unfamiliar images in the rectangle of the vast sky.

Occasionally people would glance up, but their gaze quickly returned to the news feed in their pockets. Who stopped for two whole minutes just to look up and study this blank frame?

It's not forsaken land in an ordinary sense but more akin to emptied space—content scraped off and deliberately cleared away? Rightly cleaned—unrendered. Stripped bare out here resembling what had not yet been decreed:

No advertising dictating our thoughts,

No doctrines planted,

No alarms half-endang.

This particular Tuesday 2 77 er with wind whispering cross two beams vertical p pl K k