8357. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #102

103. FURY

So, when they fell, those towers,

I knew exactly what had happened

without even being told. The tie

shop and the news-stand, both

up the street, were places I'd

passed a hundred times.

Piano-key ties, dollar-bill ties,

cows and lambs ties. The little

dark-skinned guys in there,

behind their strange glass

partition. Hands taking

money. All those sundry

newspapers and magazines.

At the corner was a liquor

store, and nearby  too was

a Pen Hospital. Yes, just

like it sounded, they repaired

pens. You'd never know it

now, but at a certain level

there actually are pens that

become valuable and worth

preserving : old-style fountain

pens, inlaid with mother-of-pearl,

or ivory. All sorts of fancy

things. The kind of stuff rich

people like to keep and care

for. You'd think I would just

say here that regular people

do that stuff do, but I won't.

Not when you can get a

plebian Bic pen for 29 cents

at most any corner store.  Or,

let me put it this way, my kind

of people are more concerned

with the content of what such

a pen produces than of the

filigree'd social value of

said pen. Understand that?

That's the sort of social divide,

in fact, the Twin Towers were

meant to exacerbate. As far as

the haves are concerned, the

have-nots are only good for

what percentage of their

billing the haves can get

back from social agencies

they bill for their services

TO the have-nots, the rabble,

the mass pieces-of-crap who

clog their streets. I know

I've said this before, but

have you ever seen a doctor

in a fifteen year old car?

Or something that's not

German or high-tech

and Lexus-greatest?

Ever seen a securities

analyst or a broker, after

they get up from their own

bowing down to Mammon,

walk away in shit clothing?

No, I didn't think so. That's

the world-consciousness

divide I was amidst and

facing. What I lived was

endless fury, and even

the police cars, back

then, in NYC, oddly

enough, were Plymouth

Furies. Hey!

-

That's the invisible social

divide that's everywhere. I

had a girl I was hanging out

with, back then, we'd bicycle

the ends of the west side  -

piers, docks, fruit and

vegetable markets, trinket

stalls, those long grasses of

then lonely and lonesome

Battery Park  -  long before

it was taken over, as now,

for idiot-playland stuff,

memorials and roller-bladers

and all those vacationers and

such from the Arlington Heights

of the world, to go see the endless

lies and fabrications arrayed for

them at Ellis island and and the

Statue of Liberty, respectively.

Herman Melville really got

it right about the Battery  - 

"Whenever I find myself

growing grim about the mouth; 

whenever it is a damp, drizzly

November in my soul; whenever

I find myself involuntarily

pausing before coffin warehouses,

and bringing up the rear of every

funeral I meet; and especially

whenever my hypos get such

an upper hand of me, that it

requires a strong moral

principle to prevent me

from deliberately stepping

into the street, and

methodically knocking

people's hats off - then, I

account it high time to

get to sea as soon as I can."

That was, of a sort, the feel

I had, a strange sense of a
 future doom, each time I was

around these nascent towers.

Something was a'borning, 

and I knew it wasn't good  -  

within my soul and inside

my spirit, something was

tolling 'bad.' Just like that

old Mariner's Church in

what was, by now, Chinatown

but which once had been 

wharfside (New York City,

Manhattan Island, three 

hundred years ago used 

to be way skinnier. Inside

streets now, seven or eight

streets deep, used to be 

coastline streets. Thus, 

names like Pearl Street (for

the oysters and piles of shells

'middens' in the old Indian

languages) or Ferry Street 

or Peck's Slip. Each time 

they dug down, they took

the dug-up dirt and stone

and threw it into the harbors,

on either side, and over time

widened the island. In fact,

where the Twin Towers stood

had once been shoreline) the

bell (out front of Mariner's

Church) would toll its signals.

So many rings for a ship

approaching for land, arrival;

so many rings for dead on board;

so many rings for missing men;

it all just reeked of doom and

foreboding. I knew it, and, yes,

thirty-three years later, I'd have

my inner senses proven right.

When the towers did fall, for

a few days afterward, in Battery

Park, they had this vast, makeshift

triage and emergency medical

encampment all set up  -  for the

injured, wounded, or maimed.

It was fully staffed and equipped.

Funny thing, no one ever showed 

up, it remained eerily empty and

unused, no 'rush' ever occurred.

Everyone was dead. A week later,

after that realization took hold,

they closed everything up and

went home. Really, the only thing

that was happening was, each time

another body was found, a 

recognizable one anyway, it was

wrapped and shrouded and 

an ambulance vehicle would drive

it off to St. Vincent's Hospital

morque, for whatever processing

could be done. St. Vincent's (where

in fact, Dylan Thomas had died), 

was once Greenwich Village's

signature hospital, for over a

hundred years. Curiously, in 

2010, it too was gone  -  closed

and shuttered and turned into

brand-new condos, filled by 

people who don't know a 

thing of this matter  -  and

under the interdict and in  

spite of, the vast clamor and

protests of all the locals. Have

I not mentioned before, also,

how real estate rules NYC, 

and the real estate interests 

have the upper hand?

-

Anyway, Judy and I would haunt 

these parts. Overnight, or late night

in any case, bicycle jaunts. To the

all-night diners, where we knew

the staff, to the drivers and

midnight drovers ready to hit

the road again and getting fortified

for the trip out, across Jersey,

across Pennsylvania. Or, from

the other angle, just in. Truckloads

of squash and tomatoes.

The pretzel and chestnut guys

would be just setting up their carts

for daybreak. Cops on the beat.

Hookers and losers, whores and

middlemen, sailors and bums.
I used to love that guy who told
me 'I'm a stevedore'. He said it with
pride. I loved that word: 'Stevedore'.

It was over all of them that, slowly,

the Twin Towers of Destruction were 
rising. Incrementally, but fast too.

As I said, it just never set right
with me, something seemed amiss,
there was always a dark cloud misting
around them : concept, idea, dread.
-
Funniest thing, to me, the word 
'prescience' - meaning, sort of, a
recognition of things to occur, before
they happen. A looming, the intuitive
motivation or recognizing an event
beforehand : simply put, broken down, 
it amounts to the repudiation of logic,
of the rational, of science!
Pre-science.