PERSHING PLAZA AND LINCOLN PABST

282. PERSHING PLAZA AND LINCOLN PABST:

"Well now that that’s over and done with we really should move on'"those were the words Lincoln Pabst used on me as we were walking along the edge of Grand Central Station right after I commented to him how it was that I remembered these very storefronts there as nothing but cheap ruins and crappy bargain sports stores thirty years ago when the entire place should probably have been boarded up and moved away and he laughed back and then said that which I just told you he said while right before that we’d just passed the side streets along Pershing Plaza which he said wasn’t really a ‘Plaza’ just a conjunction of some streets and a restaurant and the entrance to both a tunnel and a ramp and I said "yeah yeah that makes some sense and they probably had to name it after someone historical anyway because they wouldn’t name it after the restaurant or some other commercial venture which probably changes every five years anyway and for ponderous places you do need a right and historical name something people could ‘relate’ to if they ever still relate" and he nodded and said ‘well yeah but most people don’t relate anymore to anything and the kids they say can’t even find places on the map anymore and so even geography’s taken a rare bump on the long road to neglect but what’s to be expected anyway when you look around you today what do you see but a bunch of essential wise-asses strutting their stuff chasing timetables and teams and games and electronics and all the rest of the crap that flows in and out of a culture like this like some black running water of shit through the population and it’s everywhere now in huge horrid globs of overload and these people right here the ones who come into New York from places like Pennsylvania and Idaho and West Virginia what do you think they come here for but to get their own fatal dose of this stuff and take it back to their home towns and implant the same disease in their own friends and neighbors just maybe a little bit behind the times by then but ripe anyway for anything they can get their hands on and don’t let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise - there’s nothing out there anymore the old crap about right and religion and goodness and all that’s been swallowed up and busted over people’s heads a million times by now I tell you it’s itself a fearful shame that we’ve got to live with it all here ourselves" and I was listening and watching at both the same time as he talked and figuring much of the same stuff and how he was probably right I started differentiating between the people I saw the - staid and monied New York types going by me were easy to pick out the women with nice faces and proper coats and the detritus of money dripping from them and the little groups of kids and young adults still beautiful to watch and see but another step away distant and then (right outside the ‘Dylan’ Hotel as it’s properly called and named on the windows) I saw the other New York the visitor’s one with the classy out-of-towners hanging out and exiting cars and taxis and stretching themselves over the lobby and the bar and the doorman oozing attitude and all the rest and just outside that along the streetcorners the lower breeds of street types meandering and walking and talking within their own concerns all of that mixed up together in one some fatal brew and that was right then the make-up of some place I saw just like this all of this and it really no longer mattered whatever one ‘Lincoln Pabst’ said to me because (as in so much else and every other thing) I only saw things my way and he his and everyone apart is just like that we’re all separate all living distinctly in different little worlds and only where they overlap are we able to come to some kind of agreement about what IS and what EXISTS and after that point of convergence is passed - be it one hundred or one hundred million times in one lifetime - we again are still separate and alone in our thoughts and reality and we agree that the ‘make-up’ of the world as we see it is what we see all that and nothing more and it’s like the last final dream of our lives (each of us apart) when we dream of those two hands on our shoulders gently waking us from some strange and deep sleep that we slowly and gradually slip out of a trance-state dream-like and fall back gently and softly into once again yet another reality one of long duration and distorted minutes all and even moreso than any dream of life we may each have just had and with that the billowing slow clouds come over and enclose us and cover our thoughts and break us from whatever training we may have had and reduce us anew to something wise and bright and fresh and somehow together and yet alone all alone as one all over again and that’s the dream of life the rigged rugged ribald and raw dream of the New York or wherever streets born and shouldered in reality like this but traveling allover and ever-present everywhere on and within the globe and a million moments together some NEVER equal one simple minute alone with our thoughts YET never-ceasing the ever opening door continues its movement and just never seems to close NO MATTER HOW WE TRY to close it or have it close around us - and that is the struggle that is the work and THAT is the achievement of time and all its workings.