Shiny happy people laughing

Meet me in the crowd, people, people
Throw your love around, love me, love me
Take it into town, happy, happy
Put it in the ground where the flowers grow
Gold and silver shine
—-REM, “Shiny Happy People“

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
(Click to Enlarge)

Steel rusts. It’s mostly iron anyway – and iron always desires oxygen, leaving the crumbling brown rust behind. Steel always rusts. When you see something this shiny… and it isn’t plated – look for the polishing marks. Somebody really went after it with a buffer – grinding away the oxidation, the spent, the ruined – leaving the fresh metal to gleam in the sun.

It won’t last. Nothing ever does.

“I like it when she’s shiny, like a star, like a guest on the Donnie and Marie Show.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors