MARGARITAS AND THE WHOLE BRONX ZOO

232. MARGARITAS AND THE WHOLE BRONX ZOO (nyc, 1964):

[For one great unmovable moment the walls don't move and the sky itself opens : every star imagined comes down and crosses over and imbued with an earth-like existence every possibility in its own chance opens up like a flower and each one is a possibility and billions and more of distant lives are inhabited by parallels and probabilities and the massive mathematics of time and place take you home at last and you are left to wonder what all of it was once again and with that I figured to end my quoting of myself - minds are like that sometimes in a self-referential way especially towards the end of a life which breeds nothing farther along than contempt (I went once to old Sleepy Hollow where the headless Ichabod Crane was swooping by and on some ancient rock aligned right in a parkland setting I saw his mention ascribed to dream or imagination only - and his was but twenty years but I knew I had eons on him and the headless man is the man who speaks not and nods to nothing and realizes - perhaps amidst some broken shame - that he can neither be nor see and it's an altogether different world for him) and when I looked around me where I was NOW I sensed the moment of the watermill was gone the coalfields and the ironmills were beyond all understanding and I was anew amidst a culture keen on nothing but that which is imagined ephemera and distaste but if MAN the Maker no longer makes anything worth trading for what systems have we left ? the accumulated junks of wandering souls without origin and lost in a deep cosmos of want and manufactured need : mankind can no longer talk but just sings instead and young foibles are dancing on tabletops to the ruination of fathers and mothers and sons and daughters too - the world has wobbled and is falling swiftly to its predetermined (but oh so logical) end - and that sphere will open and other curtains unfold - at once as you imagined you will see 'all things' and your infinity will unfold - there was a time when a certain Nihilism penetrated everything and the airwaves seemed filled with dire predictions of bombs falling and clouds of lethal gas and fire and destruction and atomic death for all - people ate it up and thrived and flourished by it and with it and the streetcorner ferries where Water Street ended even they were filled with new people lined up for the going and for the taking of their terrible new chances and every mouth was talking thusly : 'there's money to be made I can feel it in my bones and if I can just play this right we can all rest easy because we'll all be rich - playing up the consequences can be a means to an end - people don't really have to die but if we can make them think so then it can all be turned into cash - these fools will buy anything if it has to do with doomsday and doom and their own supposed dire endings and I say let's make it while we can for tomorrow never knows and it'll all be over by then anyway' and it was always stuff like that which got my gander up - some stupid 1964 version of the future filled with ideas that never work and wouldn't if they could : paralegal secretaries hunched over typewriters and punch-cards now falling on the floor from new-fangled ways of information transfer and the peddling of crap to the masses : no one knew and no one cared and the big black Lincoln I saw pulled up to the curb from which Lincoln three men alighted and walked ceremoniously into the nearby jeweler's and as I watched they stood for a moment speaking with the proprietor behind the counter who eventually handed to them a nice black box evidently filled with something of value - what is what I never knew - and they took the box shook hands with him turned over some paperwork - not money as far as I could tell - turned and left whereupon they got back into the car and it slowly drove off : it was nothing really but it stayed in my mind as a perfect vignette of the sort of New York City street-scene stuff I'd imagine mystery books and thrillers were written from : all those arrivals and departures and exchanges and handshakes under the cover of suspicion and wonder - who knew after all where the guns were and how many or who these men represented and for whom their driver worked - their origination - thieves ? extortionists ? swindlers - any and all of that made up the play of the scene and just as obviously interesting as all that was at one end of the spectrum I was always taken as well by the activity at the other end of that spectrum - the lumber yards : at this time Manhattan still boasted its share of lumber yards and hardware wholesalers (these now have mostly passed as long ago any real estate used for these sprawling lumber-storage purposes was taken over for far more remunerative uses) and these lumber yards still in turn hosted the most perfect share of 'leftover' men - the sort of men who'd become scarce in the 'professional' faces of other New Yorkers : these were strong squat loud hefty rude pushy direct and to-the-point men in the 'lumber' trade and nothing more - they could listen as one spoke determine the need visualize the cutting and trimming of the wood ascertain which type of lumber and wood was needed grab heave throw and heft whatever it was - all the while barking commands writing on clipboards moving materiel and adding up and seeking the needed payments - all in one swift move of the streamlined brutal business of lumber-picking and delivery within the squashed and vertical confines of a screaming-back Manhattan - many a time I thought of seeking employment within one of these lumber-supply mills had I really the dire need and necessities of desire to do so (I never got to that point and was sure I'd be rejected no less) but nonetheless I watched in faint awe always as these men congregated between jobs or hawked at curbside their jabs and directives to the forklift men and the loaders and truckmen parked there : sawdust in the air the sweet-harsh smells of sap and cut wood the fire of saws and trimmers all amidst the blasted air of whatever the outside weather was - the confines of these lumber-yards too were cramped and often half covered and half inside and out of certain weathers but the overall scurry and activity covered all bases and grounds - trucks ambling in and out of the load-yard with its gas pumps and bays people and yard-hands milling about or quite busy at a task and otherwise-occupied trucks open at the curb loading OR unloading their freight cargoes - I loved it all and figured it to be the modern day's equivalent of the old horse and wagon yards and tree-cutters jack-posts of old - the contrast being that Manhattan having already been built over and structured two or three times was as unlike any of these open-post and fielded original settlements with their constructions and cuttings and forests and fields as could be and YET it still somehow held all of that activity and fascination and laborman's charm for my sore eyes - a bedraggled wonderland to be sure - and within it all I recognized always more than was there and because of it I had to do something : I smoked while twisting yarn I grimaced while breaking smiles I shook hands with the Devil's minions and had salad with the Pope Mary Quant Theodore Kheel Michael J. Quinn Henry Barnes and Geldzalder too I stayed up for days at the Wayward Hotel making ice machines melt Marlon Brando Greta Garbo Pocahantas and Mickey Rooney too all this as I wanted to run away to some African Missionary Placement Test Deadman's Graveyard in the sun and I asked my father I said 'who am I?' and there was no reply I asked my sister Jonah who said back to me 'you are the ending of whatever was and that's that' I asked the neighbor's cat-faced girl in Apt. 20d and all she did was smile back and rub her hands all over me 'you are to be frank just what I was waiting for ever and before too long I'll shade the apple-dumplings your way or closer than they are and by that smile you can know I'm yours forever - sincerely Audra' - so many words I loved and sought to hear in some confessional mode : hearts within my sleeves and dirty fingers in the pipe : the broiling sun was orange and turning up in the most unlikely places and every moment later than before I wanted to cry out 'Zeno's Paradox will help us!' and I wanted to explain just the same to anyone who'd listen 'Fermat's Last Theorum' but before I could they all had drifted away except for two little kids cutting words into the tree nearby 'what's that?' I said to myself and read 'there shouldn't be anything open that's closed and the last Columbus who was here SHOULD have known that ! H.T. and K. M. Forever!!' and that was all they'd carved and I saw the tree was bleeding elsewhere and losing leaves at an alarming rate : snack food dunder-haven margaritas and the whole Bronx Zoo!].