I really want to get this going....

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Sunday, September 07, 2008

BETWEEN THE ABSOLUTES OF BLACK AND WHITE

238. BETWEEN THE ABSOLUTES OF BLACK AND WHITE - (cherry street, nyc, 2008):

It's a sometimes thing : I was put on this Earth for no reason at all I was placed here to advance my fellow Mankind I was given no reason nor meaning to exist I was sent here with a mission to bring Man forward I was absurdly placed in a universe of neither rhyme nor reason I was given the tools and responsibility to bring something good to the race I am here as everything flounders about and withers and dies senselessly and in random ways I am here to witness that to every thing there is a time and place and a God-given reason for occurrence I witness hellacious fragmentation I see the great unity in all of creation : in like manner this could go on for pages of endless rumination as equally senseless and stupid or exalted and meaningful but such digression would bring the shame to my pain - which is un-needed and not to be welcomed for sure and in its stead I avail myself of the broader idea of 'witness' : I am that which I am as it takes place beneath a sunlight of mean logic or tortured chance (after all what else have we - alternatives in either direction lead only to shallow pits and shoals of despond) and so because of that HERE HERE I find myself wandering and telling back the story winsome wise loud and true : two bakers beneath the Brooklyn Bridge talking of transport while above hundreds of people pass walking - their little heads and colorful outfits barely seen from a short distance and over and over the scene is repeated - lovers and hikers walkers and bikers students and the despondent the priest the teacher the metal-worker the artist the craftsman the writer the housewife the buyer the wayward carpenter and the eager acolyte of some weird political creed - they all walk on and in one direction or the other they partake of the city before them : vaulted expanses of skyscraper and steel looming windows and glass high up and seagulls and pigeons which dart about while below the tugs and ferries slide by - traces of heat and smoke evade the passage of time and water - energy such as this pervades the time of day and the night (alive too in its own fashion with necklaces of bulbs and great shadows of illumination) : and alongside that the family exiting the towncar which has stopped at the Bridge Cafe while they carry their luggage and bags from the trunk and rear seat - up the narrow stairway in dark green which rises up the side of the old building - shagged and somewhat twisted and tired and old and bent the place of once-where-sailors-lived now housing a small rooming house of sorts to which this family's return has brought them - the daughter whose bag says PACE (a nearby university) and the well-dressed father - whose swagger says just as much says it with better polish too - the gent is attired like a king and his daughter (to be told) could make someone sing with a delight all their own - wife and mother and a teenage son along for the ride perhaps - the family together shoulders the load while the car's driver sits and waits - alighting from the car but for a moment and then going right back in : I watch this from an old concrete seat under the buckle-domed building along Bridge Street (once a long time ago called Cherry where a mansion sat facing the river and Washington with Martha lived) - anchored by iron stars high up in the wall and glazed with ancient rippled glass two hundred years old (ancient for here to be sure) and I start thinking how this all once was water and nothing more - the slow creep of the island's landmass stretching with fill and rubble to eventually fill in these harbor spots where once the great ships berthed - old pictures I've seen of rows of schooners being unloaded and pilings with rope and anchor and hook and cart all crowded with workers and sailors and laborers and purveyors - cart-horses wagons storehouses and granaries all now gone - like a will-o-the-wisp of inventions and vagaries a mere story in some picture book of old - and I think to myself these aren't after all the kinds of people who would go around reading Fritz Fanon or studying the markings of some old Buddhist monk these are by contrast actors on the stage - real life doers and people engaged in the money-market ventures and the foibles of finance which define downtown these are (I defined) 'Players' within their own market - restless valuation and streamlined return with streams of fluidity and risk and turnover all going on at any one time so that even now as they engaged in returning from whatever their papers were making money for them in spite of the rest of the day - weather world affairs sickness and health and the rest - just by being alive they were playing the market : finance was like that and the downtown markers of Wall Street and Broad were always in operation so that all one really needed was a hand in that mix at once and first and after that it all took care of itself : but that was another story and that was another place.

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