THE WIZARD

2. THE WIZARD:

I never learned why or how but they took down the enormous light brigade before it was found fomenting another revolution for pennies (and they sang a song of sixpence a pocketful of rye) and if four and twenty blackbirds did anything they gave Jolly Roger a black eye but it wasn't anything I could see (so I never paid it no mind) and it wouldn't have mattered anyway [1. the Italian man was polishing - with a vengeance - his car; 2. police sirens - big time - were blaring loudly in the background; 3. the night was dark and it seemed extra long] and this morning - as a for instance - I watched the sun come up from a Main Street bench outside some stupid bagel shop run by Mayans - they made coffee and I daresay it tasted like 'anything else' - which I suppose is better than 'anything but' - but when did the bagel industry get turned over (I wondered) to people from Peru ? and it didn't take me long to find out ONE ostensible reason for all that - the street right there at 6AM is used as a point of congregation by tens of Mexicans and tens of Costa Ricans and tens of whatever else MEN who gather there each day and [as I watched] get picked up for day labor by landscape crew chiefs plumbers and masonry and tile contractors and electricians [I swear 'tis so I saw it with my own eyes] and while everyone waits for everyone else to arrive they all mill about and most of them utilize the bagel shop to sit in or if not then to at least buy coffee or food while they wait and (wouldn't you know it?) coincidentally behind the counter are two young nubile senoritas in the simplest small tee shirts advertising their unique peninsular charms so as to get 'them gardener boys' all hepped up for another day's work - and sell some bagels on the side and because of all that at the least there was street activity going on beneath a grand cacophony of birds - whose break-of-day celebratory chirpings were loud and constant - and I thought to myself how all-pervasive Nature is even now underneath all things and just beyond our constant comprehension as it just goes on remonstrating with itself and developing and changing even as WE - paltry land-bound suckers - attend to shrubs and trees and fill the ground with landscape mavens and croupiers of the hedgerow all in spite of and unaware of and not cognizant in any way of what NATURE really is and how we too are merely a part of it BUT be that all as it may the campaigners for morning work here settled in and next to me on the outdoor bench I watch an electrician sit and he turns to me and says 'chilly a little no?' and I say 'yeah that it is' and look at his truck - battered worn old pickup with his lettering on the sides and a tool rack and piping rack built into the back and I realize he's probably mixing me up with the laborer he's supposed to be meeting but I say nothing nor does he and then he takes out a bright yellow cell phone and reads some message on it and a few minutes later he simply stands up walks away and intercepts a fellow walking towards us and nods and they both get into his truck and drive away and just a few minutes after that I SWEAR a 1962 maroon Chevrolet pulls up to the curb (as in some California LA scene B flick) and out from it emerge 3 Mexican guys - dark barrel-chested yet small and crew-cutted on top - bearing all the earmarks of work-in-the-heat hot summer laborers and the three head into the bagel shop leaving the car and emerge ten minutes later with 3 coffees in tow and a sackful full of something to eat and they pile back into the car with 2 additional men and they head out for another day in the occasional Jersey fields of lawn and garden (and I can't see the future yet I KNOW I'm not in it) - and the dreadnought taxi brigade too had been working its way towards wherever it needed to go : Rutgers kids airport mamas businessmen on the way - they each lined up to wait a ride and the old school-hall on the wayward hill once a great expanse of widening lawn is now but a paved-over jacket of campus police cars and weary parking spots - dorms and residences and 1960's zoom-zoom architecture clean and sterile to the view - and those who come to pay respects end up paying and that's abut it BUT all in one everything matches and no one is unhappy and ONCE MORE oh my God near me sit down four (this time) Russians speaking a fabulous tongue (and funny it must be for they all laugh uproariously) two guys and two striking dames seemingly all in control of one another - they mingle to eat and eat to mingle but never stop their discourse once and twenty minutes later they too are gone while I remain - sitting in my chair and reading Mark Twain (really) : 'shabbiness and dishonesty are not the monopoly of any race or creed but are merely human'.