318. MY JIM CARROLL STORY

MY JIM CARROLL STORY
So I was the one saving things marking things making notes all the while walking and hanging all over this crazy city like I owned it and everywhere I went there was a marking from something else drooping down filling spaces and all those sweaty crazed boys in the basketball court over by the movie theater playing crazy hot games all the time sweating and just going on ever without stopping  -  drug-infused bastardized mixes of sport and sin the loitering facts of people just hanging around and whenever now I think back to the when and then of what was going on I realize that I myself too was infused with something the sort of thing that just drops from the sky to a kid from somewhere else finding himself new and smack-dab in the middle of a place he'd never been before fallen like an angel into a city street and scene of voices chattering and clashing and vendors and carts and foods and smells everywhere the dazed sorry look of cheap pizza places the stacks of broccoli and cauliflower like you were supposed to know and piles of apples New York Stae apples falling into place off apple barges down the Hudson from Albany all those people speaking yet another tongue some vibrant tone that took getting used to crazy apple pickers off the boat and staggering around New York City all quiet and noisy at once together I looked for something and I took something too but at every crossing there was new possibility and he was an OK guy a kid really not much different than me hanging around this Jim fellow in the basketball court just standing around not saying much and I wondered but then only much later it all came to the fore and over by the fence there was a pretzel guy always standing there and I figure about this time the pretzel guy had to be like 50 if a day and I wondered what the world looked like to someone like that but now it all seems so over and different and I realize he was pretty much a youngster by even my own standards now and that all these definitions they constantly change and it's a moving line of reference but back in those days the city was pretty much still it's own unique place  -  particular things everywhere  -  and in order to be there back then to stay there one had to really work at it remain decided about being there and it wasn't easy but now it's still now easy but everything has been taken care of everything's been made to make it easy for people no one has to work hard at being there you can just go about your stuff and things are brought to you there are no hardships  -  all the docks and the piers and all that stuff now gone they've all been replaced somehow weirdly by 'happy stuff' and everywhere you go it's 'happy stuff' in your face there's no darkness any more no gloom or doubt the whole world's been turned over to idiots the screaming and the cheering sorts the ones who root for things but only programattically never on a stark dare of their own and this world truth be told this world sucks leaves a lot to be desired isn't really worth much like this at all and anyway Jim Carroll's dead the one guy I did know in all this mess while it was and before it was changing for the worse and did I mention Jim Carroll's dead?