AT LEAST THE MOTTO WAS ORIGINAL (the Revolutionary War)

206 . AT LEAST THE MOTTO WAS ORIGINAL (the Revolutionary War):

"Goldfish and goldenrod I’d heard it said and both of them seem pretty useless to me and since we’ve tamed the atom we’ve untamed the world but it’s never quaint enough that we don’t think about what once was and the old world is filled with interesting stories but no one today any longer knows them or knows them less or perhaps knows fewer of them – you know I’ve always liked using the word ‘fewer’ in any instance I can in place of the erroneous word ‘less’ which I hear so many people misuse ‘We have less customers today because of…’ but really it should be ‘we have fewer customers…’ the word ‘fewer’ being plural usage while ‘less’ seems to work perfectly well for the singular as in perhaps ‘less use’ where you wouldn’t say ‘fewer use’ but rather ‘fewer uses’ where it is wrongly said ‘less uses’ – anyway I’ll keep on with less diversion and fewer interruptions OK and moving from that to the next I’ll tell you another thing – as a dichotomy – we may want to be thankful for such things too as the battlements we just passed and the old lookout heights at the top end of this park old rock outcroppings and natural features from which the advancing armies could be seen at a distance by the settled-in armies and maybe we should be thankful for them because today’s everyday living and the calm we live amongst could not have been achieved without the sacrifices much earlier of these men who fought and staked out positions in what was basically a wilderness which was being intruded upon by others and all these others of course felt as right about their cause as did the soldiers trying to hold out as well as the soldiers from another land sent here but for the fight and all the while the beleaguered and decimated native population could merely watch in wonder or look on in sadness and awe as everyone and I mean everyone went about killing each other (I wanted to say ‘killing themselves’ but that doesn’t work) in the pursuit of a fashionably idealized sense of freedom and correct politics but even in that old day when they fought NOTHING it was nothing really made any sense and less it does today and it’s like hearing a kid say ‘my mother is French and she loves me very much’ it’s all meaningless and without any connection to anything else and as much as we destroy the natural world around us that is as much as we must really pay back for what we give out and it’s all a terror" at this point I was afraid somehow she was maybe coming unglued but wasn’t sure what to do not having spoken myself for quite some time yet I was totally interested in listening to this woman who just seemed to be rambling on and as we walked downward from her 110th Street lair near to the area where she taught and 116th Street and Morningside and the cathedral and all of that curious landscape up there (we’d just started at Parallax Books the interesting bookstore located on the selfsame street with the most intense view of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as it fronted the west – a sight I’d remembered many a time over the last 30 years but now this same street had completely refined itself and turned around its dreary location into something much finer and yes the Cathedral still proudly glowed – but we’d walked well down from there and her interest really piqued as we’d entered the park environs at The Harlem Meer as it was called) and anyway it was better to listen to her stuff than to have to hear some of the stuttering barbaric banter of those people walking by in either direction – the weird tourists from other lands with their cameras and maps and lunches the skinny local kids walking for mischief or bugging people the little groups of cackling girls on the search for whatever would bring forth their giggles the old people staggering along in silence seemingly intent on whatever the lovers entwined walking dogs or mooning the nature types slowly staring at trees and lingering beneath bridges or along the ramble their quiet and slow patter although soothing to the ears made up of nothing either the stately ones usually men walking by preoccupied with thoughts of money or prosperity or young women for all I know the religious types walking with God the kids learning to ride bicycles with mothers and fathers in tow the Japanese always eager to break out a smile and stare back the tough Germans walking with wood the hungry the fed the single the wed in EVERY aspect the pinnacle of mankind achieved even within its dregs but NOWHERE else was the talk so good not even the time I’d spent with Elizabeth Villiers Liberty from 25 Fifth Avenue an awkward persona now so long gone BUT I never forget for sincerity breeds familiarity and good dreams do all the rest and with that said I was ready to let her go on and continue which she then did with some pretty amazing new subjects - all things of course I could have myself said too but was IN THIS CASE letting her speak for me "things I hate – you really want to know? – board games card games any kind of pass the time games and by games I mean where two or more people are involved because I really do enjoy crossword puzzles but that’s all not acrostics not jumbles nor any of those other weird word-games without clues or with convoluted methods and shapes and all that RUBBISH I like being alone and I can’t stand people who insist on staying overnight or who insist on having you stay overnight because I really demand aloneness and people bother me."