Utica and the Ishtar Gate

Only the entirely desensitized can resist the inexorable drag of the urban lodestones which scatter the globe. Civilization saw its first fruits behind the cedar doors of Ishtar Gate, adorned with the emblem of the aurochs, for we shall never forget our roots. Bulls and dragons stood there too to protect the city. So even today. The 1930s saw the fertility goddess take up her guard again: the century's foe drew up the gate, a mockery in its perfect simulacrum, to herald the new dawn they darkly foreboded.

The Gate's polarizing power has drawn more and more to look on its glory: one person out of two lives in the shade it brought us. But since time out of mind, the covenant the Gate made with us seems less than sacrosanct.

The Gate brought teeming multitudes of the eager to Utica in the 19th century; they poured down the Processional Way, the Erie Canal, and found in truth the promise of aurochs, bull, and dragon fulfilled. Warp and weft, but by machine, and for the benefit of the entire land. They made colors never before seen by man, not from snails or berries but from purer and more vibrant substances never seen alone in nature. They made for themselves the tools the hand needed to earn its ease... manufacturing! Its aim, its own obsolescence, achieved, the machines worked for man and Utica flourished. In the 1920s, Utica was the radio capital of the world. The martial might of General Electric propelled the city to its zenith; here, the distance that had so long vanquished man became prey.

Two men with radios are side by side. Beyond the Gate's wildest dreams, Utica made possible for the first time the even yet unrealized reversal of Babel. Through pride and joy they tore turgid Nebuchadnezzar from his alabaster sepulchre (but his stink will still infect the world until we seal the door of his mausoleum forever).

But the Gate is a relic as forgotten as its city and a thousand others: Ur, Babylon, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, someday Baghdad; all once the largest city in the world, the latest is bound in manacles, but may yet evade its coup de grace: Ishtar's fickle bounty gives the lie to her open loins. Utica's lodestone is a grass-covered rock, infused with as great a power as that half-hearted image. Most of the people know. They leave. Piece by piece, they take the aurochs and bulls and dragons with them, until not even cows remain. But still some come to Utica, drawn by the Gate's vestigial visage and the need to fulfill that covenant, the same passion that made Babel rise.