EYES ONLY HEAVENWARD LOCKED

281. EYES ONLY HEAVENWARD LOCKED ('to win by ignoring your foe'), nyc, 1998:

Walking like fierce fire from Barrow and Bedford Streets down Hudson to No. Moore past the old industrial rail and fire pit of Ericsson Place where everything old had been replaced and the only sight to be seen was the wide-open entrance of new place after new place calling for tenant and buyer the concrete expanse of for lease square footage tenants the hand-painted target of convenience on the new blank walls newly poured concrete where the watchman sits biding his time the target in black and red paint on the wall behind his head and I’m in the pouring rain as he’s looking out with a nod and a smile and as I passed the newly constructed corner scene I could see the blank space within and I realized again how often over and over the same things are done and how and why I’d never know and that in the daylight and dark there’s an entire other world of activity not known to us or shown yet it goes on and even as I walked determinedly in the pouring rain I alone sought the deference of others in their outward presence perhaps gone but shown by memory and image no matter – and if I vouch to you that words are more than sure things to do so all I need here write is that I consider ‘relying on a lust and a piracy on a murder of time and thought to subsidize a play for beauty and in every brick and mortar the ‘platinum’ pallor of blood suited the illusory world’ with all objects drenched in lunar light and near exact to that is a light of day not here now (but instead in the rainy pallor as I rush along) and I see rows and rows of heads dining and they are backlit by the glow of soft yellow light and with spots of such candlelight on each table’s glow that are talking softly back and forth to one another as I realize I am silent only as alienation and distance are silent and so that would be for in what better warfare than this is there a place to greet the enemy alone with no voice TO WIN BY IGNORING YOUR FOE – and as I walk the endless and blazing night I am addressed by the storefronts and windows too of the wild wind off the nearby river the Spring Street song of all hearts and it makes some scoff at truth while others cringe at the hideous lapse of sensibility therein [“so I have heard and do in part believe it”] and in my mental state still wandering aimless in the rain the water is rolling off my face and beads of it hang from my nose with wet head hair ears cold clothing soaked everything wet shoes and outlook and again I begin VOICES same voices hearing tearing into me at once like mesmerizing old quotes from battle-stations and workplaces old and now long gone: “there’s just one street and they can shut it off but I’d have felt safer there than here and the worst fantasies I guess of the organizers would be marchers rolling primitive devices of fire and terror down the street as they walked and I for one have this very relieved sense that I am not in charge” and with that I look up and remember the old Ericsson place that was here the crazed inventor who’d look down upon these oily streets way back when and see only woods and land and fence and until later when the rail yards came and supplanted all that he had his EYES ONLY HEAVENWARD LOCKED and peering through the rain to the streets below I hear him say “glassed in all day like this I keep toweling the windows dry Eamon trying to wipe this fog away that keeps me blind behind glass and unable to see the outside world for what it is and the way things become shadows and blunted silhouettes of themselves and birds only become blurs as they shake a branch when they land or leave or just dash past as a flash of cloud snatching at crumbs and I know too Eamon this will all soon be gone and I find myself like those birds wet and weathered each time as I get up to the big window to clear it again and try to take in what colors are left and all the shapes out there all the living bits of matter that stand in their own ordinary uncanny light until the blurring begins again and I see my own breathing as it does it but Eamon I am not the man to record all this just watch it the distant observer of another sky for I am an inventor and here alone I research the heavens OBSERVATORY LIMIT GRAND ASTROLABE of all my heart alone and silent what can I do and what is visible to me really alas instead I shall remain here until time for me ends its own delight and you know I DO NOT KNOW THESE PEOPLE I DO NOT” and with that the night seemed to lessen its darkness and I heard the distant low growl of tugboat and ship something rolling by me and then by Beach Street I’m taken by something some wild wicked feeling of timeless cold age taking me up and the ghosts of the past wrap around me as it grows totally silent and still and only the one light across the horizon seen becomes the tear the great rip in consciousness and it all opens to other worlds and the time and space of other places those which exist concurrent and just beyond the membrane of this place and this experience and into that we I we all are pushed slowly like thick liquid oozing and time bleeds into time and other things dissolve and the clanging howl of the buttery bell ringing resounds and echoes down the February quarters of the night and around the all this all this city coalesces and comes back and returns and I am silent reading time or silent smoking water or silent I am just silent watching it all unfold.