A BEAUTIFUL LIFE TOO FOR A WHILE (nyc, 1968)

256. A BEAUTIFUL LIFE TOO FOR A WHILE (nyc, 1968):

Everyone's supposed to have an alimentary canal - some tube space wherein you taste your food - but apparently I never had one and still don't so that I couldn't care less about food nor what it tastes like nor what's in it or involved in preparing it : all the salacious drivel which keeps people usually on pins and needles about what they eat : where to get the best-tasting this or that how to properly prepare eastern salivating sea urchins noodled in alligreto-baked cream sauce with roasted pimientos and naturally-grown baked ziti - or some such crap anyway and it was actually a GOOD thing I was like that because when you're living hand-to-mouth on the streets and dependent on either what you can find steal or get with a quarter you can't be too choosy - I ate cast-off remnants of sandwiches two days old AFTER they festered for two medium-cool nights in which rats probably got first pickings I poked through plenty of restaurant and doughnut-shop cast-offs and ate good from that I stole numerous loaves of bakery-breads left early outside various delis and rectories and places like that and I picked through more than one person's share of garbage-cans and receptacles for trash - food-bags grocery boxes leftovers snacks and pastries - none of it mattered because it was always or could always be washed down with my two favorite foods (25 cent knishes or 20 cent bowls of early-morning diner oatmeal along with 5 cent cups of coffee - if I had to pay at all) and it was like that (comfortable let's say) after a season or two out there because the same people get to see you and know you and take some form of their own small pity on you (and they throw great stuff out anyway) - diner guys throwing you something for free or cheaply and people giving you dimes and quarters or others asking you to 'do' something for them - some any small task - so they could pay with change or at least feel right about giving you a hand-out BUT that's the kind of stuff you learn and see ONLY after a while of doing it : one gets over pride and gets over reticence rather quickly and it was like some New Testament thing in my head about 'I was hungry and you gave me food' or whatever it was but the more I thought about it the more confused I got because in my mind the picture was unfair - this poor schmuck who has things being besieged by people who have not and - in his perfect morality - being essentially 'forced' to fork it over - it seemed a stacked and biased way of going about things and really unfair to the have-it guy but that's was the way the general rule went and I suppose too somewhere in the back of my mind went the refrain that 'some day' if I ever had something I too would willingly and gladly fork some of it over to those who did not - but still that whole little biblical scene remained unsettling to me as if God himself or Christ or somebody was always planning to go about in secret and be undercover-testing people by knocking on their doors and asking for pity or something just to see what they received and who gave them what and it therefore seemed weird and spooky to me to see that such behavior went as quite-acceptable procedure in most church and morality sermons golden rules and all that stuff but these were the sorts of lessons I was engaging myself in during this time : small matters of introspection and sorting out of ideas and concepts which had been foisted onto me previously by things like catechism and church-schoolings and 'proper' lessons in behavior and awareness and all that 'social-grace' schlop they pour all over kids and school-members for like twelve very-long and dreary years and the ones who took it all in the best and came out all proper and schooled usually turned out anyway ten years later to be the most-successful and most-bestial proponents of bad behavior (and worldly success) at the business-expense of others anyway so wherein's the justice in that ? I thought to myself and moved on because none of it mattered and there was really no geography of time or place which could show me the means and manners needed to get through all this without being hurt or injured in some way so KNOWING THAT and remaining aware of pitfalls and dangers I forged ahead anyway with little care for danger or problematic areas - in fact I knew nothing literally and when I did first arrive there I walked blindly into and along whatever I entered and I still don't really know (outside of the ONE address I started from - 8W8th St.) how I got to the other places I frequented except by the happenstance of accident propinquity and serendipity so that the places like 11th and 14th streets and Tompkins Square Park and the extreme old east side and such remained simple mysteries which I explored and experienced simply by doing and doing-without-knowledge too but none of it was ever harmful and I knew there was really no guidebook or planning for what I was undertaking so that in the back of my mind I KNEW that everything was constantly changing and undergoing its own metamorphosis in the same way : I was but one of many outlandish pursuits awash along these streets like some old water running from a sluice and kids and strangers alike went by all lost or confused or all perfectly attired and fixated on goals IT REALLY DIDN'T MATTER because in that intermingling of purposes and intents everything came together merged and went away again - altered or affected by what just went through it but the same nonetheless - and it was of paramount importance to simply survive : wickedly cold December days with the shortest daylight and the wettest snow/slush which then broke over into that opposite dry-cold-solid-state freeze of January and February : and each of these made huge impressions upon the means and the pacing of survival itself - seeking warmth if not solace wherever it could be found - walking snow-clogged and sloppy streets up towards 17th street to enter the painter loft of Guy Gray some French artist I'd met who kept a menagerie of pets in that loft - dogs cats two big rabbits a gerbil and a parrot - who probably each lived better than me purely by accident and he pronounced his name the French way so it was always hard to say and funny to hear with essentially a 'hard' G and behind it an 'e' - pronounced 'Gee' but nothing I was ever comfortable saying - and he was friends with one Gandy Brody whom I meet five years later unbeknownst to me while he was teaching as Art Professor at Elmira College - and the two of them worked miserably at their third-rate careers both which eventually fizzled (Brody died young in about 1978) but they both had spectacular painting styles especially Brody - with numerous works I really grew to like over time - and they kept a corner of that loft set aside somehow for people just like me - indigent acquaintances who could use a crumpled corner mattress to sleep on or get warm and nothing more was ever asked - I'd get there sometimes already shot and shuttered for the day just dying to sleep or hungry with pain and it would all be taken care of - I'd sleep the nestled sleep and reawaken with new impetus and go right back to 8th Street and start anew my own work - which power would last for three or four days and then wane again so I'd start out some more walking the streets and docks to find inspiration or intimidation - and either of those I'd put to use and YES YES it was a token life but a beautiful life too for a while.