67. RESTORING
I didn't always know
where to turn, and a
few times I was quite
on my own. There
were features of life that
were constant variables
to me, and in those years
everything was still so
close together that it all
sometimes frightened me.
Just think, still young, in
about 10 years all sorts
of things had been
'smushed' together for
me in making up my
growth years. Resulting
in one, long, strange
moment. Like unending,
slowly unreeling change.
At just 8, a train wreck
that nearly killed me; a
long recuperation when
everything was all mixed
up; then seminary years;
than the end-misery of
that last period of trying
to finish my local high
school, to where I'd been
dumped unceremoniously
after seminary; then my
epic and life-changing again
jaunt throughout the streets
of NYC, basically as a bum
and an art student combined;
and then this almost fantasy
escape to another world and
way, in Columbia Crossroads,
PA, and then Elmira, NY.
And I wasn't yet quite 26.
It was a lot to assemble. To
deal with, I guess could be
said as well, but I liked to
call it 'assemble'. Life is
just a mash of raw material,
thrown and jagged, put
before you. It's then up to
that 'you' to build your wagon,
so to speak, from it all and go.
I always also used to think how
dreadfully wrong things could
get, how mistakes that were
made would haunt. Again, that
Destiny banging up against
Fate thing would trip me up
solid. It's much like today, in a
way - looking at humankind
and a computer keyboard; the
'backspace' key is suspiciously
close to the 'delete' key - the
simplest swift error and you've
hit the wrong one. But at least
they ask you - a message bloc
pops up, to 'affirm' it a second
time, and then approve. Would
only that life were so, or mine.
Sometimes I not only rue the
flashlight, but the batteries that
keep it running as well. A great
and grand suicide wouldn't
necessarily be out of the
question - but it's just too
messy and too much noise and
- as I've always put it - I do
want to see how this thing
ends up. (I've a mission in
mind and it fills my cup).
-
Back when I was in New York
City, in the very beginning, I
simply lived on the streets. It
was very hot out, the kind of
hot that ripples those streets and
makes all the bottle caps, when
there used to be bottle caps, sink
into the tar - along with pennies
and all sorts of other odd things.
There was a complete archaeology of
tar, always underway. Everything
was hanging open, doors,
windows, passageways. Air
conditioning was still pretty
rare. In fact, for most of the
lower east side it was non-existent.
People just went outside, or sat
in what they considered some
sort of airflow that cooled them.
High-floor kids five stories up,
camped out on fire escapes. Big
old adults, on rickety chairs out
front of tenements, with wet
towels around their necks. For
myself, and as it turned out,
amazingly characteristic, my
first periods of time there were
spent sleeping, fitfully, but
sleeping, either on a bench or
on the grass-ground at Tompkins
Square Park. It didn't rain, or I
don't recall any bad weather,
at all. There was an old rest-room
building at the northeast end of
the park, and it had running water
and a sink too. I don' remember
a spray fountain anywhere out
in the park, but there may have
been. This would have been
Summer '67, right after school
was done; I considered it as
graduation, but certainly not
from school, more like, fortunately,
from one allowable world straight
out to another. There were old
old people around - a hundred
sad, old, dazed Jews, leftover
from all those days of pograms
and concentration camps and
death mills. Hitler, Stalin,
at some point they all crossed.
These people were, at this time,
still plentiful and all still stunned.
They'd just sit in this park, and
other parks too, wherever they
could. Broadway also, uptown,
had a center bench-lane island,
and there would be swarms of
them there as well. All heavily
dressed, some with canes. Hats.
Ladies in clunky shoes, and
shawls. It was amazing, and
a sad, really sad sight. A
brutality that sizzled and
lived on all around them -
not to be communicated
to others. They only spoke
to one another, it seemed,
immersed as each was, yet,
in their own nightmare
still running. They filled in
each other's sentences and
pauses. There was always, in
the air around them all, some
bizarre combination of
resignation, surrender, regret
and disgust. Something like
living on, in a gray overtime
of too much seen and too
much recalled. It was a
silence that spoke volumes.
-
You have to think of this
through my eyes : I was just
a kid, an outside-land kid,
untested and with no
exposure, walking in to,
and reacting naturally to,
sights and sounds unknown
to me - unexpected as well,
and often demanding full
explanations : The guy
behind the counter in the
little eatery at the corner,
what were those numbers
on his arm, exactly, and
why was his one eye always
tearing. He ran the place alone,
tirelessly. At 11th Street and
Second Ave, coffee and a corn
muffin, with butter, 25 cents. He
never spoke. His face was always
red and his eyes, almost pink,
appeared to have no lashes,
just the barest of pink lids.
I too was lost, in a fire so
vastly different from his,
from all theirs, but lost
nonetheless. This all
threw me, for a big loop,
and for a long time - I had
to find ways, new ways, of
thinking and understanding. All
of what had gone before me,
everything presented to me, and
which I once saw as real and
which I once saw as real and
commonplace, I suddenly realized
had been both false and
exceptional too. I needed
to find a way of combining
that false past with this
new present.
-
I found, much later, a
Japanese concept, with
a word 'kintsukuroi'. It
means 'golden repair'. It
is the art of restoring
broken pottery with gold
so that the fractures are
literally illuminated - a
kind of physical expression
of the spirit. It celebrates
imperfection as an integral
part of the story. Something
not to be disguised. The
artists believe that when
something has suffered
damage and has a history,
it becomes more beautiful.
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