DIVERSION: THE TRUE STORY OF ONE 'TELEMARQUE' DENMARK VESEY

38. DIVERSION - THE TRUE STORY OF ONE 'TELEMARQUE' DENMARK VESEY:

"There are myriad levels to the things which make up an everyday life – slate gray sky towards evening with car exhaust and buses running along Fifth and the yellow lights of nighttime just coming on forming their ridge of illumination along the edges of the park and that bleak broad cityscape rising high one huge form of buildings windows and reflected lights with other things thrusting in shadows to any here or there in any direction the shallow shoal of escaping daylight still pierced between great darkening clouds something rolling in from the west – a huge form of weather or darkness and clouds or both and all at rest for everything tired of form and work once the shimmering brown echo of words and sentences jagged and hung in the air suspended faces between people those passing and those addressing each other the forms of late business still being done the doubters the sharpies those happy and those sad to or from or on their meager way to something – some grace of evening respite and all among this deep within it are first people then their minds all together as one making this world up as they go along each one a distinct personality ! THOUGH what is personality (you maybe asked?) well the answer turns out to be NOT specific for the newer sciences of human nature proclaim their discoveries that personality as we know it has exactly five dimensions : people are - in varying degrees - either open to experience or incurious or conscientious or undirected or extroverted or introverted agreeable or antagonistic or neurotic or stable and this is today known as in the literature as the FIVE-FACTOR MODEL or ‘FFM’ and these five dimensions are referred to as OCEAN and all five attributes are partly inheritable and they are too what behavioral geneticists look to for a definition of personality and it seems there is no need for finer tuning for OCEAN accounts for everything and most of the 18,000 adjectives for personality traits can be tied to one of these dimensions and parents cannot therefore make a ‘fretful’ child into a ‘serene’ adult and it is irrelevant that they can make their children perhaps into opera buffs water-skiers food connoisseurs bilingual speakers trumpet players and churchgoers for science cannot comprehend what it cannot measure and what cannot be measured I guess I cannot speak of here nor even describe Science can however measure anxiety can measure atrocity cannot measure hate or anger can measure trepidation cannot measure rage and these are all things for which the sweat machine the lie detector the pulsemeter can accomplish - nothing really other than pallid poor measures
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And we move forward on the suppositions of these correct accomplishments which are in reality NOTHING so then : be what you are whatever you are whatever it is regale yourself with the blue sky as you walk up the ramp observe the grandeur of simple ‘things’ as you pass them by read yourself like you would a book or a code and be simply satisfied with that" and that was the end of the entire scene the end of the room and the shingle on the outside wall and the imagined or real slights and flights of imagination – rueful real doubtful or shady whatever no money changed hands and anyone who watched was welcomed to look and much later it was as I was down along Vesey Street
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searching out something that I thought about Denmark Vesey and who or what he was and why a place like this bore such a name and found that those old New Yorkers were a difficult lot – supporting evidently only losers not winners for old Denmark Vesey or a namesake from 1822 or thereabouts was a sorrowful scene to behold but his story still rang true and I guess New Yorkers in those days valued something even though it’s always seemed that all they valued was good grub and money and the making of both together and in actuality even Denmark Vesey wasn’t Denmark Vesey but Telemarque and Denmark Vesey was the captain who had the ownership oddly enough but I’d be guessing that Telemarque somehow took the name or became branded or stuck with it and all this time later that’s how we know him oddly enough too but whatever the case may be there I was finding myself walking upward from the area which used to be the Westside docks where nothing is today except endless money and people on the make and a crowd of incessant mourners at all times of course gawking at only what used to be there - HOWEVER - it goes that they’re pining for what used to be there only back to the WTC days while I’ve for sure long got them beat on that count as I try to look back a hundred years or more looking past whatever crap they’d seen or imagined they’d seen wanting more as usual more than I could ever get and the markings on the rib of Adam are merely markings by the hand of God some say but to myself I mutter something far different
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‘Denmark Vesey whose real name was Telemarque and is only known to HISTORY as Denmark Vesey is a person who has made it into history for his hopes and not his deeds for he did in fact die on the gallows as a failure and is but popularly known as a leader of a slave revolt in Charleston South Carolina a ‘revolt’ however which never got beyond the planning stage and for his plan and his ideas Telemarque and thirty-four other Negroes were hanged and his life was filled with a melancholy irony for as a slave for over twenty years he sailed with his master one Captain Vesey to the Virgin Islands and Haiti which was then ruled by free black men and Telemarque was Captain Vesey’s property but moved about the streets of Charleston like a free man and he secured his own freedom oddly enough by winning a 1500 dollar lottery of which he used 600 dollars to buy his freedom from his master - has also tried to purchase his children but was unable to do so - Telemarque was born in 1767 and sold at an early age by Captain Vesey but later re-purchased because he suffered from epilepsy and as Captain Vesey’s constant companion he learned much about the nature of freedom and of business so that when he did become free he applied his experience and knowledge to his own business ventures and soon prospered yet he wanted more than anything to secure the freedom of his own people and partly because he could read and write and partly because the church was the one place he could speak to large numbers of Negroes without questioning by whites he became a Methodist minister and in short order his home was made a regular meeting place and money was collected to buy arms and he had a blacksmith make a large number of daggers and bayonets and a white barber sympathetic to his plans was engaged to fashion wigs and whiskers out of European hair so that his mulatto conspirators could penetrate the heart of the city and seize control when the time came and Zero Hour was set for the second Sunday in July of 1822 (‘Denmark Vesey Day’ somewhere) and as everything was in readiness the whole scheme had suddenly to be advanced to June 16 (‘Denmark Vesey Day’ somewhere too) but the plans which had been in the making for two years had been revealed to the whites by a Negro whom Telemarque felt he could trust and in a twinkling Charleston was an armed camp and the whites rounded up hundreds of Negroes believed to be involved in the plot and Telemarque went into hiding but after two days was discovered and taken captive after which a local tribunal was set up and operated as judge and jury hearing condemning testimony from scores of witnesses and even with a fine defense Telemarque was shown to be in no doubt of planning the overthrow of the city and for this he was sentenced to be hanged along with thirty-four other Negroes while four whites who had aided them were merely fined and imprisoned and two days before Independence day in 1822 Denmark Vesey died on the gallows (‘Denmark Vesey Day’ in South Carolina)’ and I realized that all Civil War sympathies and sides put aside probably the real reason for Denmark Vesey’s honor here was because of his industrious endeavor towards business and using his knowledge of business to push and prod himself and others along for by whatever other means early New Yorkers honored people that surely was among the first one or two and good for that all I guess but what’s an anti-slavery insurrectionist in today’s light anyway but a boor a nuisance and a sideshow surreal distraction but here we are LEFT with a street so named in honor and even if no one else knows that I do and I hereby perpetrate the concept oh DOCTOR HORATIO SWANN Doctor Jerome Nessler and anyone else seeking to typecast the soliloquy they may seek to have heard (‘for whom the rising light entails their own eclipse brightening as they fail OH brightening as they fail!’)