7259. VIRTUAL BELLS AND ELECTRONIC WHISTLES:
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We have motioned to the guard standing nearby that we will enter past the
barricades and he nods and lets us through as there are thousands of people
around us and behind us walking or looking out and staring and those with
cameras seem to punch with their elbows the glaring sky wherein high above us
silent except for the constant thwunk-thwunk of blades the helicopter stays in
place and it can be seen from nearly every angle behind or alongside or above
the spire that great solid one the Empire State Building spire where the
tourists have massed and there are hundreds in strange colors of bright blues
and greens and various reds so that they all look like distant rainbow travelers
from afar for no one local wears that stuff and it is obvious to see why instead
the black of New York should be the color of the day for these grouped
heavyweights all look hideous but happy and high above without moving again
still is that helicopter sentinel savage swinging blades atop the world and here
down below I swear one street with one thousand cops the men and women in blue I
guess they say stand around with faces polyglot the shameless and the bold the
sad and the happy those men with pride wearing their beribboned badges and
multi-colored achievement bars and the newer ones the recruits with nothing the
single stripes and the sergeant stripes and the lieutenant bars and the awards
and the service pins with gloves and hats the street is lined and the motorcycle
cops in three's are riding the strangely empty streets where along each edge the
barricades are up the blue wood and bold letters the wagons from the Bronx the
traffic control buses and the motorcycles roaring loudly up the varied canyons
and it is all as if we are awaiting something new and delicious or strange and
decidedly odd this changing year this new millenium this topping off of the century
of life and light and the brilliance and eccentricity and war and death and the
pain of steam and electricity and the wired current of all times soaring
thorough space and electric time zones with homage and heritage to take and to
leave the grand old churches and the one with the huge bells now blasting over a
six o'clock street which takes them in that sound momentous yet so old does not
seem out of place but is in an odd way as if from another distant time and past
when bells were meaning and meanings were the sounds of bells tolling the simple
hammer action of mechanical movement but here we throng boldly into the
twenty-first century puffed up with a hubris of virtual bells and electronic
bell-sounds and the pride that comes from practicing a superiority which really
isn't anything but a dangerous dare towards time and its geometry both which
pass swiftly before our eyes and all up Lexington we walk and look about and all
up Broadway we are close by and all along Park Avenue we stare ahead and up and
up across the way the great visage glomming looming face of Grand Central
forever stares out and we walk about and enter right up to the statue of
Vanderbilt and find the single lost glove of someone other than him someone
besides ourselves another creature like to us who has lost a leather glove and
then a broken stanchion is there and a stepladder and yet we look up and remark
on the statue and look down the imperial street Park Avenue before us where
traffic cars whiz and people mill about the corners on which each are groups of
black men selling noisemakers and sunglasses and hats and pompoms and
streamers the stuff of a mis-placed joy and rambled wedge through the wetting
woods of time and energy misplaced and only the granite here is constant the
huge slabs of stone and rock which have gone into the make-up of the very city
we inhabit the degree just superior to us as far as time and longevity shall
mark it the longer-lasting ice of trim and fire its energy and swell put
together for the great single growth of time and all mankind and there the
people swarm and stop and stop again and then move on as the hot dog vendors and
the washroom attendants and the loose dogs and the fiery pigeons move about and
briefcases and suitcases and long coats and great tweed overcoats parade by and
there is the one here he comes the Irish lad first I've ever seen strolling
along Lexington in a bowler hat nattily just right attired like a God singly
spent and ready for the night this night the last night of the twentieth century
and we shall none of us enter it alone it seems as all the single globe is
turning with us and everywhere from TV screens everywhere seen are pictures of
exhibitions of every other city that seems to be celebrating too their own New
Year's Mad Hatter Festival of Lights celebrating nay all unto death verily but
even that is not enough will not be can not be enough for here with us are
people packed into O'Reilly's Pub to watch and stare and talk and drink towards
the advancement of our one great puzzle and the others come in those with great
big green and white funny hats and they have noisemakers and are quite young and
they move about to celebrate their joy and are thereby singing aloud to all who
are there and they revel in their time and others ignore their time or stare
straight out to TV screens showing Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Egypt and there are
the Pyramids at Giza and the great lights and the piddling antics of Rome at
midnight and London works its way and we are covering the globe and we must be
made be forced to be made to be aware of oneness and globalism and that tempered
arousement of doing all things the same and once but we are not too foolish we
say too foolish to miss the big things just stupid enough to go along and we
pledge then these resolutions 'I will never be afraid again I will never fear to
stand alone I will never greet the coming of a dawn with gladness for all of
mankind just myself I will never be part of a herd I will walk alone alongside
no one except myself I will temper no remarks in order to please another' and
these are the words which should be writ electric high above the sky high where
the maddening stream of helicopter gunship myopic telescopic eye-opening
magnifying recording sound-seeking master of the universe dwells the one and
only state edge of control watching that below the minions God's own revelry
those seeking Revelations in their biblical cookies the noisemakers the
preachers the conflagrationists the missionaries the wanderers the talkers the
walkers those dead and deadened in supermarket aisles and Citarella tanks and
buildings high with restaurant names writ in gold leaf on broad windows facing
avenues of lust and love and hungers where the blind men seek their shoelaces
and glory in the very same darkness and the postal office facade and the
eyeglass laboratories sit astride all together the arc-faced glorious guardian
of time all Grand Central time so I fall asleep in one world and truly awake in
another and the mailman and the guard and the limo driver and the clerk and the
soup waiter and the bartender they all together smile and say "You must be
thinking what'd I do break a window or something?" But it's only Grand Central
prices it's only true love at the Oyster Bar and the stockbrokers are heading
back to Connecticut and it's only travel so they are awaiting time and departure
at the bar while all around them floormen are walking and seating the people and
soups and salads are being served and the proud wasp'y barman is serving nine
dollar drinks to the swerving crowd and the beautiful women are talking to stern
men and the Texas travelers with their twang are seated and they begin to ask
directions towards time and place and it's only money they say and this will
never happen again it's only the millennium once I'll never be here again in all
my life I'll never see another millennium this is the best New Year's of my
entire existence send us all another round and the dour young man on the cell
phone is talking sweetly to perhaps a lover or a wife saying dear sweet things
about where he is and when he'll be arriving and his late hours at the office
and no it wasn't to be quite a full day but almost and on his arm the wispy
other blonde hangs morosely almost drunk it's comedy by the hour the mirrored
glass reflects the time and the portraiture along all the walls of ships and
steamers and boats and clammers and passenger lines and harbor shots show once
again Commodore Vanderbilt's work not for naught still lives and proceeds and
the Oyster Bar Grand Central frieze remembers all forever and all beneath us the
fierce broad trains are running on.
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