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).