THE OLD WORLD WAS REALLY GONE

37. THE OLD WORLD WAS REALLY GONE:

From every corner it seemed something seeped - vicious words exchanged by strangers and the humid loves between two people exchanging summations of all times and places - and the newspaper before me had just run a story - yet again - of Canal Street and its westside end - a terminus I'd written about before and remembered well - but they'd left off so much about everything that it was hardly worth reading and I sat there perplexed and wondering WHY do people excise so much of everything in order to make a simple point about the modern day and they never admit to having changed anything they just fall right into place believing and thinking that what they'd just made was always true and HAD BEEN SO forever and I was reminded of the old Russian guy who when asked if it was possible to foretell the future replied : 'yes - no problem with the future we know exactly what it will bring BUT our problem is with the past -- THAT keeps changing' and I realized what he meant but it wasn't supposed to happen here yet it was and it was that kind of coarsely ladled opinion which colored the old world and it seemed had now all but disappeared as today people had somehow arrived at some crazed gentleness some kid-glove softness of opinion and bearing NO ONE wanting to hurt anyone else but just to grab a profit off them that's fine and all of the old world really was gone the BRUTAL one the one forgotten the world wherein people took responsibility for whatever it was they did and dealt with it (no screaming Mimi's for help aid assistance and recompense no hands-out demands for sustenance and gain) and I remembered another old guy who'd once convinced me of the correctness of his lethal opinion that the word 'husband' was merely a misinterpreted and mis-spelled derivation over the years of the word 'housebound' from which it had come and although I THINK I knew he was incorrect somewhere he brought me to the point of harboring a doubt - but it was all in the way he said it and in the sterness of his old conviction while he said it (things are funny like that sometimes) and I realize for certain too that NOW I'm not really sure about anything not certain that anything makes sense or carries truth and the entire topsy-turvy world now bears ALONE the print of the cloven hoof of the great god Pan and that is what rules the world - excursions and pleasure and dance and diversion - and like the 'War to End All Wars' NO SUCH THING ever existed.