THIS STREET IS CLOSED FOR FILMING

135. 'THIS STREET IS CLOSED FOR FILMING':

I could never watch the girl go home alone - which is why I never liked movies and I could never allow for the removal of reality enough to pretend something was happening either - sort of the very opposite of the first and yet in some way the two are inextricably linked for in the usual 'movie' sense of things the girl it seems NEVER goes home alone because unhappy endings are frowned upon in an industry dedicated to the serviceable notion that all of life has happy endings and most-positive situations and any of that can easily be put into the service of generating profit and elongating careers for thousands of people : just today along Fulton Street and that area I was stopped by marshals and traffic police and told I could not walk to where I was headed as the street was closed for filming of a television series pilot - a car crash - for a weekly show to be called 'Mayor' about the streets of New York and the necessary cars had already been put into position - placed strategically - for the crash to take place and extras in expensive business attire and briefcases and the like had already been situated in place for the scene and lights-camera-action and all of that was about to start and the guy who was moving me about the streets right along there said they had been closed for the day and I saw that people were being turned away just as I had been and the nearby corner with the scene and lighting trucks also had an operational catering truck serving lunch to the actors and crew and as soon as that was all complete he said they'd be back to work filming the collision-scene as already set-up and I turned to him and said "you mean to say this really is an 'accident about to happen' don't you?" and he laughed and said he guessed so yes and I went along my way up the street towards the Strand Bookstore which was busy with its usual downtown branch activities - books bins along the sidewalk and the rest - and it all gave me time to consider the fact of reality versus fantasy and real people against actors and situations which never really occur being made to occur and the whole reality at that point of everything else too and those sorts of thoughts filled my mind as I walked along : garbage men postal trucks huge tourist buses sanitation trucks and police people all rolled into one as well as handfuls of groups of tourists on their ways to or from and in fact one slow and dazed looking Fed Ex delivery guy ambling along with three overnight packets in his hands looking slowly for a certain and particular address for whatever reason right nearby to the old Excelsior Power Station and Eden Alley (which is now anything but Edenic).

I'VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO YOUR TASTE

134. I'VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO YOUR TASTE:

Once upon a time in Magnolia Glow Somewhere USA there was a firestorm bird prancing to fly - it ran and it ran it flapped and it flapped but it NEVER could leave the ground : 'appearances deceive' it was told 'there's not a real need for you to fly even though you THINK convincingly that you can' and that meant of course so much for 'actualization' and the realization of any penchant for freedom travel life escape and with that conquered idea down the drain everything else went to the dogs with it - life became a dull bore rancid with unequal conversions and petrified situations - things never meant to coalesce things never granted accumulations of wishes and desires and because of that even the rotation of the Earth wavered for some time before deciding to halt as the sun it seemed ran backwards and the planets in place began falling and everything relative to everything else became but like a dream image - twisted unsure a bit out of kilter but with emotion so real one would swear it was real but only wise men know the true soil of the material world and what sprouts from it and NO MATTER WHAT ELSE IS PLANTED only certain categories of growth come forth : a 'we' and a 'they' and a coin box at the wishing well of foundations and SUDDENLY I looked up and around me saw : a five-man chorus singing Celtic songs about nature and the world and the reawakening of all things as nearby some ten bagpipers descended and began to play : tuneful dirge mournful something a melody that made me cry : and I took out a pen and wrote on the wall 'I forgive no one for anything - and never will either' and then I got up to walk away and was again outdoors where I'd thought I was anyway and saw bright light sunlit umbrellas and people at tables sipping teas and wines and torrid men in white jackets bringing sandwiches and pastries to those who sat around and I wondered to myself what world I'd entered for it felt for sure I'd not been here before and then a panic set in as I remembered once long ago seeing a situation much like this when of a sudden a crazed and angered street-person came along and started ranting to everyone about something and then he came through the barrier and started upending tables throwing ashtrays and smashing water goblets and everyone screamed and started running back or getting away or going inside and two men came out to attempt to subdue the man who was beast-like in his sudden strength and then three policeman arrived and they tackled the guy and with a club subdued him and held him down and they handcuffed him and dragged him off - into a patrol car and swiftly away - and the mess was cleaned but nothing ever went back to the scene it had been just before and I remembered that scene in some little horror thinking of it could ever happen again but I realized it could not for the world had changed and NONE of these people dwelt in that sort of a world and they'd not understand it or recognize it if they did and that sort of occurrence had simply been thought out of existence - the vastness of change the alteration of a million consciousnesses had somehow led to something else and something new entirely and that was what we now lived : REMNANTS of stages of parts of some forlorn evolution of daring and doubt and destruction with smoldering ruins which we just went ahead and decided to live around and keep going nonetheless no matter so what : crucible of steel molten lava of circumstance all wizardry of valuation and merit : listen up and you will hear the midnight sound of what is near - the palpitating moments of lies and deceit and the magic of grace redeemed if only to be found and lost again and the world is a thousand magic moments in one swift instant and NO ONE can read the handwriting on the wall.
(Uncongenial quarters in uncongenial isolation)...

DO ALL THAT YOU CAN DO NOT TO DRAW BLOOD

133. DO ALL THAT YOU CAN DO NOT TO DRAW BLOOD:

Is it that someone will rob you in the pants that you fear ? then do all that you can do not to draw blood for you are REMEMBER in the American Isles and the rules are different - no machete no scimitar no saber allowed - and things are all about finesse are they not ? NO they are not these are again the AMERICAN Isles and people take seats where they choose they sit where they may and talk about whatever it is they wish to talk about and no stopping them for that : every subject becomes of course tendentious prattle and boring nonsense mostly filled with error but one cannot AGAIN stop that (I want to be a fly on THAT wall) and I'd love to listen to her talk some more BUT I GOTTA' GO! and did you know that Prohibition was one of the longest dumbest chapters in the history of 20th century American folly and the impulses behind it are still alive today ? or that the architects of that bizarre experiment were as varied as the country in which they lived and included : 'faith-based Christian zealots idealistic social reformers flat-out bigots a few solemn feminists and more than a few cynical businessmen who simply wanted their blue-collar workers to show up sober and on time' and that part of the ease and success of the Prohibition movement came from being tied in with the 'support our boys' war effort underway in WWI with Americans being urged to 'support our boys in uniform by keeping them away from alcohol and loose women' and because we were fine upstanding people and 'blessed by God we should never enter combat with the dastardly Hun while suffering from hangovers' but the problems Prohibition faced - at the same time - came from immigrants and especially New York immigrants the millions of Irish Italians and Jews and even Germans who were being asked to abandon their own cultural habits including drinking and thereby ABSOLUTELY prove they were Americans and that the 13 years 10 months and 18 days of Prohibition were little more than a crazed American utopian delusion pressed down onto hordes of hard-drinking recent new citizens part of whose new 'birthright' they had thought was Individual Liberty and the right to do something they'd selected to do and all it did - even as these American soldiers returned home and marched in parades in a dry city - was cause a cultural insurgency unlike any other seen before and the new proliferation of speakeasies caused crime to proliferate as Jews Italians and Irish took it first upon themselves to form illegal syndicates for distribution and then later UNITE and COMBINE these operations into alliances - and corruption was then used to cut down on enforcement through payoffs and dirty cops and by playing upon the easy temptations of money presented to enforcement officers (who were often not even real police) and it was nearly impossible to stop saloons and later speakeasies anyway as they had always served immigrant communities well as centers for social commingling employment centers shakedown halls mustering centers and simply places of socialization and community bonding - in these cases a sort of defiant laughter was their response to all this foolishness - and thousands of Americans would die too during these years from bad liquor during the 'noble experiment' - THERE WERE 15,000 saloons in New York when Prohibition started and within a few years of it there were 32,000 speakeasies as saloons and eventually even ENFORCEMENT was only done reluctantly and the American delusion faded away AND WHAT'S THAT TELL YOU - idealists can always ruin an ideal so be assured of that : and like the old pick-up line from some 1930's film 'you've got the curves baby and I've got the angles' the whole story was made for a match - the ideal against the real the concept against the error - AMERICA has always been in the grip of something whether a fierce crusade for some perverse ideal or a 'dangerous lobotmizing notion of endless war' and a 'great writer of fiction of course by writing truthfully about the society in which he or she lives cannot help but evoke the better standards of justice and truthfulness that we have the right to press for in the imperfect societies in which we live' (heard all that somewhere by candlelight one night drinking wine on a 62nd Street couch in a perfectly shaded ivory room on some seventh floor of somewhere and the person who spoke was wise beyond means (I thought) and vivacious and stunning too but I didn't know my reasoning went much beyond that and I only later found out that such was the means by which revolutionaries too were given training and just like 'cells' in the old communist underground these small groups of people known only to each other communed in a silence louder than sin but it was cool and so was I and everything went well for a very long time and THAT'S HOW WE LEARN and that's how we grow in these 'strenuous mercantilistic biases which are American culture' ( a part of me sensed I wanted nobility I wanted a royal European culture but was instead getting this...) I got motor oil in grassy ground I got singed trees where a forest once was I got both the YES and the NO of the culture at the very same time - a coarsened sensibility and an ineffective mind but that was the American way back then ('and I was so much older then - I'm younger than that now').

SADLIN'S WATER CAFE

132. SADLIN'S WATER CAFE (In the American isles):

'Too much salvation to accumulate too many points of origin to trace and the long wide train from the New England hills has gone off the track long ago'...
-
"As we passed, out of Chester today at Old Dutch Road the Forbes Estate there was a flatbed truck just arriving with a brand new beautifully cream-white Rolls Royce with a black convertible top being transported up their roadway and it had the austere smell of the capital rich about it the almost legimate means of wealth and nobility which was allowed - in the American episodes - to prosper and grow as men after each other and their storied women too instead allowed themselves to turn attention to the quest for gold and read the numbers and ride the markets up and down in and out until they amassed great sums and margin-sums of fortune and as shakeouts came and went they were each able to make alliances and ride the doom-bells and find the new crests and make their fortunes so that deep in the woods in places like this and in townhouses like that vast hidden mansions of fortune were built and today's world is a remnant of all that swaddling new money made old and not a whimper was ever really pronounced and no one has really ever objected either and they could live lives of privilege and you know no matter what else is done I do suppose it's always been true that as they say 'there is no culture without a standard of altruism of regard for others' but actually that MAY have once been true but I have my doubts about it now - and even then - because I've found that mankind does nothing - singly or en masse - unless first some self-interest is being served and money itself by its very nature or at least the quest for money always seems to replace any introspective energies or passionate intellectual quests and just as well any code of self-sacrifice or immense hope and I always figured that's pretty much what was meant by 'the love of money is the root of all evil' though I find that as well very unsatisfying and not nearly encompassing enough as a saying" and he was writing in a notebook between his bouts of talking as I'd come upon him at Sadlin's Water Cafe which was a curious and small place on the east edge of Chambers Street near where the Collect used to be and now was all government civic and welfare buildings family court and all the rest and the beleaguered place was a real nowhere - in between as it were the tentacled expanses the vivacities of Chinatown the financial district and the area around City Hall - so that it was amidst all these places but had nothing of its own to speak of - occasional bums passed out or just waiting where the pond used to be (a true mess) financial and bureaucratic careerists passing through and the prison traffic of The Tombs and all its guards visitors cooks and sanitizers all passing around and to but no one other than commercial beings really traversed the area and when they did it was the indigent the hurting or those in need - real need - the five-kids-with-no-food kind of need the stuff Family Services stepped in and took control of and the 'Water Cafe' as it was named although all water had long ago been taken away was set between two much larger buildings with brick and mortar and high glass windows and everything towering over Sadlin's with its small posture and darkened shadowed nooks where people sat - often just staring - and this guy who'd said long ago his name was James - James Madison in fact - just stayed in place writing and talking whenever the urge struck and it's always amazing the leeway people get when they're adduced to be 'smart' or 'genius' or eccentric even and no one ever stopped this guy from going on in his own way about whatever he wished (it wasn't the first nor even the tenth time I'd seen him) and he had already gotten to know me from previous sit-in's and he'd in fact offered the coffee I drank a few times already - bought and re-bought and I never said no to any of that and he said "I was almost a lawyer you know - right over there at John Jay - but I always had more of an interest in philosophy and the two don't mix very well - law and philosophy that is - always at odds with each other one thing bumping into another and turning into the next so that I couldn't really do justice to either so I just quit all that and found a way VOILA! to be here and there instead and now philosophy's a wonderful thing and made just for me - I harbor no man's passions and work hard at making my own and it can't be beat and BY THE WAY did you know that in the long history of religion the one obvious and dangerous fact that jumps out is probably the most simple one too : Christian religion and Judaic tradition and all the old enforced religions have simply cut off prophecy and new revelations as if the old and new testaments had simply one day STOPPED and ended and with that too ended ALL of God's workings in the world as if He'd forgotten all about mankind and simply went along elsewhere on His way but there are newer religions now - Mormonism among them - which enforce the creed of a still-active prophesy and a working God present in the world today and even the Muslims don't do that and with this thought in mind you realize that ALL doors which were once long ago closed and then simply worshipped are once again all opened and given new life and possibility with the idea of NEW prophesy coming through constantly and the titular 'head' of the Mormon Church is considered a Prophet and because of that apt at any point to tap once more into the active work of God and find himself decreeing anything new and original all over again and the millions of Mormon followers now would go to death enforcing that new prophecy or regulation or creed - and isn't that really an amazing thought the very idea that we could at any time be back on the cusp of new words from God - with new details on things and new commands and energies to go forth and do something ANYTHING to enforce again the real life of this miserable world!" and I said "no I hadn't realized that" and he smiled and said back "think of it as this way - at any time we can be led once again into new revelation which would change everything we may have thought until now and to me that's amazing incredible and worth everything in the world to know" and I said "well then am I to assume you're a Mormon?" and he said "no not by any means - just an active observer right now and waiting" which I of course found puzzling but then most of the things about him puzzled me as it always seemed he never really had anything to do but say what it was he was doing - very odd - and the more I thought of the revelation stuff the more I realized that yes it was truly fraught with possibilities but who would listen to what was considered really no more than a strange sect an offshoot of more realizable religions in a country which pretty much had considered that long ago it had settled all accounts with religion of any sort - and now here was this new guy saying it could all start again at any time and I wondered to myself 'is this true ? who else has known of this and not mentioned it ? how prevalent is this knowledge?' and most importantly 'how correct is it?' - answers I never got but then any evaluation of religion is usually unsecured and it ends up being based on whatever it is you want to believe so I felt 'no matter' to that and then I asked him "all well and good but how is any of that philosophy?" and he said "well you see ANYTHING can be made to be philosophy if you phrase it so and dwell on it enough in those terms and all philosophy is really is a broad approach to finding a point of view with which to justify acts and means" so I stayed around and listened to this Mr. Madison who for all I knew could have been the guy who invented all the bullshit on Madison Avenue because sometimes he really sounded like it but I knew from observation that at heart he was really in earnest and onto something and it reminded me of the way prisoners sometimes - when they write letters or start talking about things - use obscurely large and unnecessary words in stiltled and overwrought prose as a means of merely parading their self-taught knowledge in front of others which it usually isn't - knowledge or self-taught - because they miss the entire point by burying themselves in a few textbooks of law or grammar or whatever and then swallowing them whole regurgitate the entire edifice back out into people's faces and that never works because - you see - the essence of knowledge and true education is in knowing the means of intuitively caressing and portraying - sometimes without 'saying' - the essentials of what you're trying to portray or impart and it's usually smooth glib and attractive whereas the self-taught motivator's schtick is usually slow obtuse obscure and annoying too and Mr. James Madison here sometimes came close to that but he kept a certain elan alive by just touching on things and then retreating into questioning or transferring to some other point so that nothing ever was nor seemed tiresome and belabored - and that made all the difference even if it probably NEVER would have washed in a court of law - so he'd probably made a good decision on that count BUT I still never knew what he did for a living or how he managed to stay in place.

A SURREPTITIOUS VALPARAISO : an abstract - 'IT WAS A PETER TOLENDINO MOMENT'

131. A SURREPTITIOUS VALPARAISO - an abstract - 'IT WAS A PETER TOLENDINO MOMENT' (I don't wish to say any more):

Said with certainty - ask anyone - things mean more than they really are : the ponderous drawbridge of circumstance and occurrence the little items with which we mark destiny and days and time - listening hard to Beethoven while deconstructing a Bagatelle Fur Elise just to see what makes it tick - different tempos within speeded up slowed down and stopped the topsy-turvy over and around of the lead melody (right hand) while all that other stuff is underneath (left hand) and then they mesh uproariously together in some glissendo of speeded-up rage or glory (don't know) and all the while the regularity of it all brings a certain welcome peace or some reticent background ease to the entire thing and from experience I know it can really be played a hundred ways but only one's right (is that correct?) and that means all the others are wrong (is THAT correct?) - oh well who knows anything for certain - incendiary meltdown here I come and just like this fellow I once knew Peter Tolendino who spent many months reading 'God Is My Co-Pilot' and 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo' as if gospel truth were being dispensed (what grandiosities what great pictures must have been drawn in that obsessive young mind but no more than mine and no more than thine) and in like the blink of an eye they had robed the Emperor for blast-off sent him flying through the sky for 'one God's as good as another God' it seems and if you can make the nation-state secure with the Emperor no more then by any means TURN HIM LOOSE set him free point him into the sky and fire let him fly make a God out of that guy and then write his stories in the flashback tense - 'the bombs were falling the city was scorched we were young and very frightened and we ran to him as our parents died and soon there was nothing left so little to eat and even the pigs then were running free again chasing chickens and somehow all these animals had survived when so many people had not' and even the palace of the Emperor (whom they'd just made a God) took a hit : and when the new walls do come tumbling down they'll still be handing out Spanish menus at the corner of 14th Street and 2nd Ave and the days of wine and roses will have left town and by then all the grand painters of old (color tint perspective and the rest) Giotto Tintoretto Caravaggio and DaVinci too (more to come on him later) will have created their own Giacometti and Rauschenberg and 'the other painters in the field will be left in places making postcards sketching lilies and making sure the tomb is sealed.'

MY FATHER WAS A SAILOR WHO SAILED UPON THE SEA

130. MY FATHER WAS A SAILOR WHO SAILED UPON THE SEA:

There was never any sense to naming things but we did it anyway and every time he got something wrong or called something incorrectly I had to just let it go for the basic premise was simply that he knew no better - and the gong that rang the hour had just gone off (9:00 PM) the radio voice said and I watched him nod and then fall back asleep and he would sleep like that for hours if anyone let him - noisily and with a nasal snore or some noise which came from him - and then just as quickly he'd be awake and just sit there sometimes just staring ahead until perhaps everything came back into focus and it was like that - and enigmatically so - as one by one all the neighbors and friends he'd once known started following him into a Death of their own and by now almost all of them are gone already and those who are not are just waiting - like some old shoe - to drop and it's as sad as anything else : some bizarre appointment we each have yet didn't quite correctly receive the little appointment card for - the one which states the date and the time - and the older one gets the more intense is the realization that the appointment card - having never arrived - is becoming more and more useless anyway as TIME the ertswhile friend of all - has itself already left the waiting room and given up on waiting and because of that there are so so many things that one goes through - reliving the past forgetting everything talking nonsense getting bizarre with strange ideas or simply doing nothing at all - it's really a last act in a one-act play which has gone on way too long : audience restless refreshments already gone lines forming for another production ushers wanting to be paid and rent running out on the performance hall too BUT REALLY what can one do for we're all beside ourselves with worry and grief and it solves nothing in the end UNTIL one day I charted myself and found a sickness in my own loins and knew too it was time to come and without further ado and before long even I was down for the count - the long long langourous count given by referees in skin-tight pants and riding jackets complete with harness and whip and the lithesome young ladies who came forward to draw blood were nothing more than the Devil's retainers and so I did nothing - having already ascertained it was useless to try and I learned too the meaning of 'brouhaha' which all through the Middle Ages was given as the NOISE the Devil made for laughter : some form of EVIL sounding foreboding noise rendered deeply dark - 'BROU HA HA!!' - and I could imagine hearing it at any time and now it's but a word used to denote a big ruckus or large confusion over something a rumble or a fight or some queer disturbance and when you come right down to it that's really ALL I heard for a very long time.

RED BITTLES AND CARAVAN DAWNS

129. RED BITTLES AND CARAVAN DAWNS - ('Only the dead know the dead'), NYC, 1968:

Anglefire was a crazed streetguy I knew through the years he walked the streets - almost savage and always ridiculous he was edging constantly towards a state of total insanity - mixed as a concoction through the use of alcohol bad food the occasional whatever and an anger which sometimes cropped up unexpectedly and weirdly too and he would reiterate to anyone 'it's Anglefire not Angelfire just remember that you asshole and throw something my way a'fore I steal your dreams and rip your daughter's head off!' - undoubtedly a real way to gain sympathy money and comfort I always thought - and he was taken away so many times that it became ludicrous to think of them even trying but they kept it on and every little assorted stupid thing he did along the Bowery or MacDougal or 8th or wherever usually got him into some form of stupid problem and then released just as quickly because no one can understand a stupid homeless idiot and no one wishes to expend time or money trying and one day along Waverly Place some drunk kids turned on him after he started annoying them and they beat the living daylights out of him which is how I came upon him crumpled on the sidewalk and with his face bleeding from a few cuts but he was still cogent and I was able to get him up and he stared talking again "dem dem bastard kids I could kill 'em if I got 'em they ain't woirth the piddle they piss in and this is what I mean y'see why I can't go nowhere it's always something coming up like some frigged class warfare against the lonely single ones and I jes' want to be left alone but they won't so this is what you get now take me somewhere I gotta' shit and my stomach's killing me too" and with that he sort of just collapsed and became lifeless and propped up against me for the instant I could hold him up but that wasn't long and I let him down gently onto the cold sidewalk where he just stayed and I noticed his color and it wasn't good and I thought to myself Jesus Christ he looks like the Civil War a blue turning to gray and I kind of knew he was dead just then like it dawned on me I had to do something but luckily too other people had come out from their places and they were standing around watching and all I could do was say "somebody call somebody this man I think is dead" and a few minutes later there was a cop car and then an ambulance later after that and they'd already covered him when I got back from answering questions with the cops whose main concern was what I was doing there and why and who I was and all of that stuff and I said I really really didn't know much except what he'd muttered to me and then someone else piped up they'd seen the beating and the kids from their window (they pointed up nearby) and they said he was getting hit and kicked pretty hard for a minute or so by three guys who then ran off but that wasn't any help except to me when he said I wasn't around for that so the cops let it go and the ambulance took his body away and I later figured he'd been processed as dead homeless without anybody and probably taken out to Randall's Island or wherever they take the Potter's Field dead people who get buried by work crews from Rikers Island prison and that was it for me and him and it was a hard lesson to understand - some unmarked dead guy who you just occasionally run across but never get to know and the simple fact was even after he was dead I knew nothing absolutely nothing of him - not if he had effects or where he stayed or where anything might be NOTHING except the fact of his presence and now its lack and I wondered how many unmarked people like that just die in doorways or are taken to shelters and stuff to languish and die and they never speak of connections nor want anybody to know anything about them either and it's the best way they can see to live a life unseen and still never get happy but so what I guess it's always like that for everybody else too and maybe only the dead know the dead.