GEORGE WASHINGTON BE DAMNED

63. GEORGE WASHINGTON BE DAMNED:

When something goes wrong you want to fix the problem and do it again and have nothing go wrong so that you feel the problem is solved - yet then when it goes wrong again you are really distressed and flabbergasted that it's again happened : that can make for a really tough time and I was thinking like that as I walked along just today in Washington Heights high above the rest of the city on some elevated plateau where it's said General Washington looked out over Brooklyn and Long Island Harlem Heights and the river down below to watch the advance of British armies as he got set to high-tail it out of there over into New Jersey on the run from British troops - and all that may be true as far as I know but it bears no relation to the modern day which is instead like a Spanish six-pack of weird people and clumps of those I'd rather not meet hanging around and walking against things and I saw some blind guy shuffling along in dark glasses and a seeing-eye-stick and he kind of slapped it along the pavement as he went and I moved away figuring I didn't want to trip him up nor be tripped by him and his aggressive stick-style of walking and then later I saw some guy and decided as he nodded to ask him a question which I'd wanted to know about the building he was exiting and he cupped his ear and motioned deafness - which was OK by me - and I let it go at that and waved him away figuring if those two ever met he'd never hear the approaching tap tap of the stick from behind and the blind guy would never know he was about to crash into the deaf guy and I figured 'Whew! Washington thought HE had problems!' and it was called once also Fort Washington right there which was I guess what they named the Fort after Washington had left it or maybe a long time after because it seems no one ever gets things named for themselves while they're still there or around and anyway go ask Roberto Clemete or someone if you don't believe me because no one ever gets rewards until they don't need them - it's like some Catch 22 of life - and a few blocks north of there was The Cloisters - some old French monastery that John D. Rockefeller bought in France and had dismantled stone by stone and shipped here and rebuilt in Fort Tryon Park on a piece of land HE himself donated - talk about control and pushiness - and there it still stands all awesome and profound and things but it's now run by the stupid Parks Department and the government and all that so everywhere you go the attitude is 'sacred holy special sacrosanct' and there's really really no fun there at all just a bunch of thirty dollar an hour guards and ticket takers and flaneurs walking around with their medieval fake noses in the fake medieval air and for me that takes ALL the air out of things because it's far too serious by people who know nothing and who've gotten far too serious about themselves and what it is they're doing but it's like that everywhere - faux Tudor apartments on the street pretending to be old and wealthy in some fucked-up ghetto of poverty and medical stuff and lame people walking about everywhere all silent and sad and dour and intent on getting whatever they can from others because they're ailing and I really hate that kind of dependency and expectation and on the park bench nearby two guys are sitting - one all scrunched up and nervous looking and the other with this stupid little kinky goatee hugging his chin has his eyes closed and his polished head pointed up to the sky taking all the sunlight he can get on his face of course for free and George Washington be damned!