It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context. - Jeff VanderMeer

The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris—or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.

Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?

But the fact is I don’t care. I haven’t cared since I came here, and I will continue not to care until I leave. With as much of Ambergris smoldering behind me as I can manage.