8849. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, Pt. 238

238. ENLIVENED

I immediately went to 

my very number one 

mode of thinking:

how stupid those 

Muslims were, missing, 

as they did, the entire 

point of Life and Reality. 

Like any of those

Iron-Age, rigidly 

biblical religions 

with their tit-for-tat

format of a God as 

the great clipboard 

holder in the sky,

taking accounts and 

harboring offenses 

and insults, dabbing

out rewards and 

restitutions, they'd 

only been able to find

sense, within their

own thought-morass, 

by going after the 

'physical.' How idiotic. 

'Crash a few planes, 

kill some people, 

knock down some 

representations of 

things, and we'll 

teach them!' 

Meanwhile, their 

sluggo religion 

pressed on with 

Heavenly rewards, 

anxious virgins 

awaiting the 

deed-doers with 

open, Heavenly, 

unveiled (I guessed), 

legs and heads. Boy 

man, gotta' figure 

that shit out someday 

soon. At the same 

time, missing the 

entire point of Life 

and Being, they 

gave no clue to 

the factor of their

not being able to 

hit or harm that real, 

the invisible, the 

paramount presence 

of a place like NYC, 

the line of Western 

legacy  -  whatever 

its value  -  in its 

layers of words 

and acts over years. 

Like a prayer always 

being mumbled, the 

spiritual soul and 

value of Manhattan  

-  like the wastrel 

wind of Hart Crane 

or Thom Paine, 

could never be 

extinguished. 

They were just 

too stupid to know 

that. Personally, I 

thanked my God, 

for their sake, that, 

really, nothing more 

than this had occurred. 

This was horrid, but it 

was at least localized. 

The rest of the city 

was able to forge on 

 -  writers wrote and 

songsters sang, work 

got done. The paradigm 

was advanced.

-

I walked the streets

punning. What goes

up must come down.

You can't avoid the Fall.

It was in some respects

the only thing doable.

There was a little piece

of my own feeling I

returned to  - at Trinity

Church, to the rear,

there's a place called

'Cherub Gate' with a

sculpted cherub in

its overhang. The

information with it

goes: "The cherub

above is a gift to

Trinity Church from

the Church of St.

Mary-Le-Bow in

London which was

designed by Sir

Christopher Wren

in 1680 and was

destroyed in an air

raid on May 10, 1941.

The cherub survived

the bombing and was

presented  to Trinity

Church on June 11,

1964." And boy, if

that wasn't ever right.

The church itself, and

its yard and graveyard

too (Alexander Hamilton,

Robert Fulton, and a

hundred others at least)

was coated white  - the

same nasty white ash that

was on everything. The

white ash had damaged

the pipe organ, clogging

its vents or whatever.

Inside the church, a

relief station had been

set up, and stayed there

for a few months  -  soups,

food, bedding, coffee, etc.

Emergency lodging for

whomever, firemen on

their sleep-breaks, iron 

and steelworkers, the 

same. George and Martha

Washington still had their

pew there, marked and

maintained. They once 

lived, before there was 

a White House, etc., 

nearby at Cherry Street, 

by the East River. Cherry
Street there is long gone.

(There is a difficult- 

to-see plaque for 

that too, in the 

pediment of one 

of the NY side 

Brooklyn Bridge 

supports. No one

cares.)  -  George and

Martha, it's recollected,

would slowly make 

their way, on Sundays,

on George's huge, white

horse, to the church.

Now, all those graves,

in that churchyard, sat

as if in a silent, gray 

snow. I would often, 

during these months, 

 just go to the Cherub, 

above the stairway

and gate, and just

gaze at it. Past it 

flew Time.

-

The church, as it 

has always been, 

(3rd church structure

at the location, however. 

400 years, fire, and the

deterioration of age too

the other two), is at 

75 Broadway, at Wall

Street. It remained 

timeless, and at least

gave some semblance

of sense to the idiocy 

I witnessed. The funny

thing is, too, that, over

the years, I've taken 2 

or 3 other people there, 

to see this cherub. No 

one cared a whit for 

what I was showing. 

Friends, wife, just 

shrugged. The only

person who ever really

got a rise out of it

was some crazy 

California girl, deep

into New Age and

Actualization stuff,

whom I'd taken on a

walk-tour through the

area. This little remnant

of time brought her

totally to life.
-
The weird thing about 
all this was  -  if you believe 
in religion, and are striking 
out so strongly for a real
spiritual sense of mission 
and action  -  the only thing
you can do best is 'destroy'
the physical world? A
place where nothing 
truly dwells anyway? Their 
frenzied fantasy was, I was 
certain, both faulty
and incomplete.
-
I had more faith in George
and Martha Washington's 
asses on their horse to
and from Cherry Street than 
I did in any of this other stuff
anyway. You have to enter the
world differently, or you're just 
going to waste away and begin 
doing really stupid things, like
those  A-rabs and their mighty
queer announcements of belief.
The more I started thinking about 
it anyway, the more I realized
about this Islam stuff : it's a
queer religion  - I mean 'queer'
queer, like men-on-men stuff.
Only they could even think
about doing stuff like this so as
to attain an 'erotic' end.
Who else mixes eroticism
with religion. I ask you?
Leave out the Catholic
weirdos like St. Theresa 
of Avila and all that, 
swooning around under
the fantasy that she was
obligated to having 'sex'
with her Jesus.