RANDOM THOUGHTS OF MARTIN CALABRE (nyc, 1975)

197. THE RANDOM THOUGHTS OF ONE MARTIN CALABRE (nyc, 1975):

"And with a nose too big for Mona Lisa the girl alongside me was digging for something in her purse (that little word girls used for the trundle bag they carried) and it was filled with everything else but - lipstick paperback book spare slippers a small scissors a small prayerbook (the kind they hand out on streets) a flashlight a pair of leather gloves a mirror and a small notebook for names and numbers and as I watched her I remembered Mona Lisa herself - that sordid painting I'd looked at a hundred times decrying its tepid color and too-hasty countryside background in its strange greens and blues the too-big nose and all those dark umber features with what they call 'that enigmatic smile' but all she ever looked like to me was some overweight Italian complainer just young enough to be maybe attractive for an instant before she turned into another version of her fat Italian mother screeching and complaining about everything - but that's another matter - and I remembered as well another time when I overhead a big fat black girl say to her friend (they were both walking alongside each other on the sidewalk) what sounded exactly like 'riding the stubble into the warm' and then that black girl stopped in her tracks and suddenly looked skyward and began to sing aloud with the most beautiful and sustained soprano voice (a sustainable clear sound of warbling pitch) a simple hymn to Jesus as if she was in some baptist preacher's hollow of a chapel in some deep piney southern woods and it was amazing at that moment to see and hear it all transpire - quickly suddenly and in a way that transformed everything else in that small moment and then they both (the two girls) went on their way again down the sidewalk and towards wherever their paths were taking them (someone once said of such moments 'all plans are kaput' when something like that occurs) : my father was a racist if that means being concerned first by race - he'd always make that first initial judgment about a person by judging the race of that person and like people say 'it runs in the family' whether heartburn or heart disease or cancer or thrombosis of the fucking liver whatever it is and if it does then I guess maybe I'm a racist too because sadly I judge by the evidence at hand and if anyone wants to counter that then they anytime can - and I've found 'you can't eat in the fast lane' is as good a way as any to determine something about a person (it sure beats race) because if anyone can get the funny part of that statement then to me it shows a good discernment DISCERNMENT like an artist's grandeur or discernment as in 'you can't tell me how to be' or watch or think either...and all you have to do to succeed is throw caution to the winds and take a stand and be not afraid to say it consequences be damned and all it takes is a little fine bit of conversation and innuendo and even double entendre if you want it to make the line-up smart and powerful : I watched two men fighting one Tuesday afternoon and they were both tediously beating the crap out of one another bare-fisted and angry and it all was right outside on the sidewalk near old Coenties Slip and no matter the whatever of what issue brought them to blows (turns out it was a woman whose charms they'd both been enjoying) at that vicious moment they were both TOTALLY committed and ideologically pure in their intense motivation right then to make right the essence of their emotion and their force and subliminal to it all and an undercurrent beneath their actions was the proud sense of righteousness (or rightness) which comes forth from the committed whether its a political revolutionary or some redneck flagellant outpunching anyone anywhere these two fellows meant every extension of their strength and arms and their endlessly-seemingly-stupid fight had coated each of their faces and hands and knuckles with blood and probably taken out some teeth too by they went on oblivious to any of that - massive steeds of stupidity in an enforced fixation on small violence - and until a horse-mounted cop showed up and swaggered them both with his billy club while he simply waded on horseback right into them (the incredible aplomb of the horse just as amazing) it went on : frenzied attention to detail probably as they'd never before done : but what else is life and manner but commitment and attention to detail or to something made detailistic whether attitude or belief or value - each and all of those things do occasionally make a country but more often just timidly go about making and delineating the fractures of everyday life (in the most simple fashion in the smallest way in the most inconsequential moment of ever at all) EVER AT ALL and alongside that all else pales and the problems that come to be are simply that - small obstacles to be handled and the small crowd watching this display in turn bore witness through itself to the fixated anxiety with which most people live their own lives : caught up and bespoken by others and OTHERS who keep their attention which is sort of the key and the reason for entertainment games comedy and amusement in and of itself : windswept cinder-block plazas and chalked up rivers of glass with taped over fissures and cracked outposts of all living to oblivion together and overhead on that dismal roadway the simple traffic roars as it sweeps along its way cars honking horns wipers clapping at the dead-end light and the dedicated swish of car tires running through the rain and pigeons flock in swaying groups and swoop on each intention as the hospital courtyard is hollow and gray where the old squeaky gate sets squeaking away."