9155. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, Pt. 321

321. A DO-GOODER'S END

The poet e. e. cummings 

(who never used capital letters),

had written two things  -

not poems, just little quips  -

that I liked. The first one was

'The first and most exciting

sign that Spring had really

come was the balloon man.

First you herd his whistle

in the distance.' And the

other one was 'The difference

between a business man

and an artist is this : the

business man lives in a

world which is completely

outside him. That's his

reality. When that world

collapses, he collapses.

But the artist never

turns a hair. Why?

Because the artist's

country is inside him.'

Both, and either, of

those could certainly

make a person's day.

Or sure did anyway

for me. Cummings had

lived at Patchin Place,

nearby. At number 4.

Patchin Place was,

and still is, one of

those small gated

nowhere streets

that weren't even

really streets. Just

alleys or lanes to

nowhere, which

ran behind or

between other

buildings  -  servant's

quarters once, places

where the horses were

kept, carriage houses,

all slowly turned into

living quarters. In the

1940's, another great

American poet, oddly

enough named Kenneth

Patchen, lived there too

-  in Patchin Place,

as a neighbor of the

Cummings'. (He later

left there, and died in

the 1960's I think, in

Palo Alto, California).

No cars at all in this

iteration of Patchin

Place. It was, as I said,

gated, and only accessible

by foot. I always wished,

yeah, all my heart, to

be able to be someone

living in one of these

places  - Washington

Mews, Sniffen Court,

Patchin Place, and

there were others.

High time for all

this ended about

1924, from then

on it was all

downhill, with

automobiles  -  as

they advanced and

grew  -  taking over

everything and

most especially

screwing up and

despoiling these

sorts of little

places in the city.

Grace goes right

out the window.

Bam-boom, there

you go and wouldn't

you know it : I end

up in a 1949 birth

hole and get trounced

around to some

sick-ass suburb of

blight and frenzy.

It always led me

to the belief that

alternate life-versions

have memories too,

even the stuff that

didn't happen. I know

I had memories

of it all.

-

So I'd walk around

in a mad-mind

daze of my own.

 I owned this

place, and very

few others were

ever let in. I was

so in love with

the destitute and

the broken. It was

from them that,

in these walks

and musings, I

was able to draw

 my strength and

creativity, a real

counter-force

which drew energy

from a form of

'resistance' to all

the globbed-up

mess I'd see before

me. And I was

always finding

stuff too, to bolster

my beliefs. From 1866,

I found, once, in

The Nation, an article

by some guy named

Bayard Taylor, a

poet and traveler

in these same depths,

a hundred years

previous. Amazingly, he
pu it thusly: "Everywhere

the same crowd of

unwashed humanity,

the same rags and filth,

the same stifling

atmosphere. The

men are either abject,

besotted, and reckless

creatures, or criminals

of a low and cowardly

order; the women are

coarse and hard-featured,

and having for the

most part their

mouths full of

vitriol and beastly

words." That was

so good.

-

I found myself thriving

on all that, convincing

myself that no 'present'

existed at all. If there

is no 'fabric' to the time

which we walk through,

or convince ourselves that

we're walking through,

then what we're doing is

walking though imagination,

which goes backwards, 

and forwards as well, but

which never really gets

to a now, which is always

rolling off of it in one

direction or another.

To put it bluntly : Fred

Flinstone or Buck Rogers,

though both of those pasts

and future too are false. 

Face it, theoretically it's

nothing we can ever grasp.

My conceptual goal was to

prove to myself that all

items are momentary, and

are chimerical as well.

We're all just here waiting

for the elevator, and perhaps,

or perhaps not, we get to

select that up or down 

button ourselves. I won't 

know until it's over, so 

bear with me. 

-

More than any of that,

what used to really un-nerve

me, or annoy me, were all

the do-gooders who seemed

always to be coming forward.

Not a bad word about anything,

all things being 'equal' to them

and without judgment. This 

city was full of them, some 

carrying signs. I always

stayed away, as much as

I could. But they were

there : ban the bomb, no

Vietnam, Johnson and

McNamara blow; a 

hundred variations on 

the theme. Like today. 

None of my friends

or acquaintances really 

ever cared about those

 things much. We 

were always on 

a quest for something 

else; and that's NOT

 like today, when 

everyone's together 

and caught up in the

same slough, as one,
 all claiming to want

the same thing. Why?
Just because they do, that's
why. The difference exists, 
because we lived in an 

adult world, then. 

Now it's all infantile, 

everything is infantile.
The entire world has
become a cartoon.
Bubbly, chubby, tattoo'd
people, reading kiddie
fiction as literature. 

Like a baby  -  

everyone cries, 

no one wants to 

be hurt or left 

out, no sensible 

reason for any of 

this is ever brought 

up except the broadly 
general 'reason' of
'who' you want to be 
with. Your new pal.

To look good. 

That's about the 

the end of it, which 

is the same as a 

do-gooder's end. 

Even old Henry 

David Thoreau, 

big-time idealist, 

Transcendentalist 

peace-guy galore,

he had his say in

this muck. But first, 

I always found, or

I had to learn, that 

the best way to get 

your point across 

is to just go at 

someone, head-on, 

rephrase their 

question, turn 

it to argument, 

flip it back and 

present it to them 

differently. Then 

they suddenly see 

how stupid it is, 

and how foolish

they look.  And by

really even refusing 

to accommodate their

premise, you blanche

their question, right 

off. Like this quote, 

I found it from 

Henry Thoreau 

once, and it 

nearly made me 

spit up. He took 

a noble concept 

and reduced it 

to freaking absurdity, 

without ever realizing 

how foolish he looked.

Boy, if I was there 

I'd have given it 

right back to him, 

and shredded him 

good. It was such 

a weak, do-gooder 

point of view that 

it made me think 

he was either 

play-acting gay 

or just weak and 

never had lifted 

anything heavier 

than a book. Here's 

the crud he spoke : 

He was talking about 

the NYC Almshouse, 

newly created for 

the poor, and 

moved to new 

headquarters on 

Blackwell's Island, 

in the East River. 

The conditions just 

as quickly were

there found also to 

be squalid,  repressive, 

and harsh, not doing 

the poor much good 

at all. Thoreau  -  

somehow concerning 

himself with this 

issue  -  willing as 

ever to play the 

fool and make an 

unwelcome point, 

saw in the experience 

of the almshouse inmate, 

in 1854, a potential 

source of hope. "You 

may perhaps have 

some pleasant, thrilling, 

glorious hours, even 

in a poorhouse. The 

setting sun is reflected 

from the windows of 

the almshouse as 

brightly as from 

the rich man's 

abode; the snow 

melts before its 

door as early in 

the Spring. I do 

not see but a quiet 

mind may live 

as contentedly 

there, and have 

as cheering thoughts, 

as in a palace." 

Yes, yes, thought 

I, and get that 

man to his cloister, 

and quickly too.